Dear All,

I delivered a speech at ToastMasters Cairo club last Thursday entitled “The Development Way“, this is a follow up Email I sent to the club members, thought to blog about it too, might add more details later.

As I didn’t find enough time to emphasize on the idea of the project, so thought to share some information about it for whom might be interested. By the way, I picked up the title as of presenting the project as a solution to the pre-discussed problems but may be I didn’t get that clear.

1) A very descriptive article from Al-Ahram weekly: May, 2006! [English]

Desert Development Corridor: Into The Sahara
Farouk El-Baz proposes a superhighway to solve Egypt’s pressing problems

This article advances the case for a proposed superhighway west of the Nile from the Mediterranean Sea coastline to Lake Nasser. The proposal would provide numerous opportunities for the development of new communities, agriculture, industry, trade and tourism around a 2,000 km strip of the Western Desert. The Government of Egypt was unable or unwilling to pursue the project, when I first proposed it 20 years ago, for whatever reasons. Because the country is presently facing insurmountable problems, the proposal is resubmitted for consideration by the private sector — local, Arab and international investors.

Link: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/794/sc789.htm

2) Project layout from the General Authority for Industrial Development

Link: http://www.ida.gov.eg/atlas/el_baz_industrialzones.html [Won’t work with FireFox!, preview using Internet Explorer]

3) Aljazeera, “Without Barriers” interview with El-Baz: December, 2007 [Arabic]

A general talk about why his generation wasn’t able to introduce much development to Egypt and the way to developing Egypt from his own experience. Discussing the issues of education and leadership in Egypt too.

Text: http://www.aljazeera.net/channel/archive/archive?ArchiveId=301757 [Arabic]
Video (Discussions about the project starts at 30:00): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3V4gABc598 [Arabic]

Hope that will give a much more clear idea about the project.

All the best

– Abdelrahman