Paper short abstract:

As Egypt has recently become the promised land of energy success stories, these promises involve precarity for millions of working class citizens who are faced with the removal of energy subsidies. The paper is based on ethnographic research both among policy-makers and among Egyptian families.

Paper long abstract:

Egypt recently broke a world record in the energy sector: the largest gas field discovered to date, Zohr, in the Mediterranean basin was brought into production in just two years. This record has attracted many investors worldwide. At the same time, the military regime led by Marshal al-Sissi launched an ambitious investment plan in renewable energies. For gas as for solar and wind, Egypt appears to be the promised land of the energy future.

And yet, all these promises are based on one condition, set as a must by producers and funders: that the government should remove subsidies on energy from which Egyptian citizens have benefited for decades and that they have been regarding as a 'social right'.

As a matter of fact, eliminating these subsidies was the first step taken by al-Sissi's regime, entailing a 500% increase for products consumed by the poorest (Gasoline 80 and LPG).

This paper addresses the following issue raised by the panel: « What new forms of precarity and scarcity do large-scale infrastructural impositions by local or international powerholders entail? » It is based on a double ethnographic research that I have been conducting in Egypt for 2 years. On the one hand, an ethnography of the policy-making process in the energy sector, among ministerial executives, company officials and international experts. On the other hand, an ethnography of Egyptian households, and the daily practices they develop to try to resist or adapt to these changes, or the ways in which they suffer their consequences.