When the president decides to speak

In 2024, President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi spoke to Egyptians less compared to previous years.

The year began with El-Sisi's victory for a third and final presidential term, saw the pound’s value drop by about 40% against the dollar, and featured Egypt’s key mediation efforts to end the war in Gaza. Yet, throughout the year, Egyptians heard from their president only 75 times—the lowest number recorded since Al Manassa began tracking his speeches in 2018. ^(*)

While 2024 and the pandemic year of 2020 tied for the fewest presidential speeches, 2021 marked a record high, with El-Sisi delivering 166 speeches and statements—nearly 60% increase from pre-pandemic years of 105 speeches in 2018 and 104 in 2019.

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Although political leaders rarely divulge everything, their speeches often reflects their ideas, priorities, and biases. Their speeches offer insights into their personal and institutional agendas, and provide the basis upon which the public holds them accountable.

In 2024, about half of El-Sisi’s speeches were improvised. The word he uttered most frequently was ‘Egypt,’ followed by ‘God,’ ‘president,’ and then ‘economy’ and its derivatives. This aligns with the wave of price hikes that followed the dramatic surge in the dollar’s value in March 2024, indicating that the economic crisis remained foremost on his agenda.

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Despite speaking less often, the president continued to defend his administration’s performance, maintaining a narrative that blames the country’s woes on both domestic and international actors. While asserting that the government had not made any disastrous or reckless decisions, he frequently employed a tone of warning and challenge, urging citizens to remain patient and endure hardships.

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Invoking Somalia and Gaza

During a joint press conference with his Somali counterpart, on Jan. 21, El-Sisi invoked Somalia’s civil war to highlight the economic toll of unrest.

“Somalia’s economy is estimated at $7 million^(**) for a population of 25 million,” he said. “It might be a little more, but imagine if, from 1990 until today, Somalia’s economy had grown by a billion dollars each year—what would its economic status be now? All those resources were lost to the Somali people... and they have to start over—to build, rebuild, and develop... This is a message for the Egyptian people.”

El-Sisi’s fear-driven language carried an implicit warning: a similar fate awaits Egypt if the public does not rally behind the government. The timing was no coincidence—the black market dollar exchange rate had just hit 70 pounds, painting a grim picture of what might lie ahead.

Three days later, during Police Day celebrations, the president used the same tactic but shifted his focus eastward, connecting Egypt’s economic woes to the genocide in Gaza.

Hammering home the message, he said, “Everything can be endured. Everything can be endured... except for your country—or our country. Everything can be endured except our country. What, we won’t eat? We’re eating. We won’t drink? We’re drinking. Everything is moving forward. So what if things are expensive, or some things are unavailable? So what? I’m telling you, God has given us a real-life example—people we can’t even get food to”, referring to Gaza.

“I didn’t find a country... I found a mess!”

In one of his most intense addresses—during the Armed Forces’ educational symposium on March 9, 2024—El-Sisi used a phrase that reflects his vision of the situation when he assumed power: “I swear to God... I swear to God, I didn’t find a country. I didn’t find a country. I found a mess. And they told me, ‘Here, take it.’”

He repeated the phrase in full, signaling that his aim was not just to emphasize past challenges but also to absolve himself of responsibility for any subsequent deterioration.

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To forcefully dismiss allegations of corruption or mismanagement within the government, El-Sisi adopted a tone of unwavering certainty: “As I told you, no one has said that $10 or $12 billion were taken out of Egypt by state officials... No, that didn’t happen. That didn’t happen. And it won’t happen, by God’s grace.”

The repetition is striking—not just in the direct denials like “that didn’t happen,” but also in the preemptive negation of future wrongdoing: “it won’t happen, by God’s grace.” The rhetorical approach signifies total closure—declaring the matter settled and casting any doubts as illegitimate.

Accumulated costs and inherited crises

In the same speech, the president justified current conditions by linking them to past upheavals. “This is the cost of 10 years of battle.” He continued, “Ten years of battle come at a cost. And before that, 2011 came at a cost. And after that, 2013 came at a cost. No one can bear that burden alone. I can’t bear it alone. The government can’t bear it alone.”

By placing the burden on both the state and the public, El-Sisi framed Egypt’s economic turmoil as an inevitable outcome of prolonged instability. Yet, at the same time, he absolved his administration of any role in exacerbating the crisis: “We didn’t act recklessly—not out of whim, nor out of misunderstanding, nor poor judgment. We didn’t make decisions that would drive you into a wall and destroy Egypt. No.”

Who’s to blame then?

During his Police Day speech (Jan. 24, 2024), El-Sisi argued that the economy had been performing well before 2020, with growth surpassing 6%^(***), targeting what he called the “overwhelming majority” of citizens, not the elite. “The poor are being crushed—where will they get money? How will they spend? How will they spend? How will they send their children to school? How will they feed their kids? How will they pay for electricity, water, clothing, when life is this hard?” he said. 

He insisted that the issue was not about misplaced priorities but rather the urgent need to preserve state cohesion. The solution, he stressed, lies in dealing with the dollar shortage: “If we fix the dollar crisis in Egypt, nothing else will matter.” The only way to achieve this was to boost manufacturing and exports to secure stable foreign currency inflows sufficient to meet import demands, the president said.

While El-Sisi’s rhetoric revolves around “challenges and perseverance,” it offers little in the way of concrete relief for citizens burdened by daily costs.

He focuses on long-term strategies, such as industrial expansion and dollar generation, yet his discourse sidesteps structural problems in Egypt’s manufacturing sector—like raw material shortages, soaring production costs, high interest and tax rates, and an exodus of business owners.

Even during periods of high GDP growth, poverty rates have risen—undermining the claim that the “overwhelming majority” were the beneficiaries.

Since the government, according to El-Sisi, is free of error, the blame must lie elsewhere. Hence, he turned to importers and speculators: “Have I reproached anyone? Have I reproached people who brought in goods and priced them as if the dollar were 70 or 80 pounds? Have I reproached anyone? Did I ask the government to intervene through its various agencies?”

Here, he shifted responsibility onto dealers and importers, questioning the impact of aggressive government market oversight: “Someone might ask, ‘Why didn’t you take stricter measures?’ Why? Because we’re in a major crisis. Should we complicate it further? Or should we all try to bear it together?”

“Everything is moving forward”

Six days after his fiery address at the March 9 Armed Forces’ symposium, El-Sisi struck a calmer tone during a visit to the Police Academy on March 15. He reassured Egyptians that the situation was improving: “I want to assure you—thank God, things are moving forward. We have no shortage of goods. Even the items that were delayed at the ports are now being cleared, thank God.”

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Just days earlier, the Central Bank had announced a commitment to a market-determined exchange rate during an emergency Monetary Policy Committee meeting. It also raised interest rates by 6%—the largest single-session hike since Egypt’s foreign currency shortage began in February 2022.

Following the announcement, the official dollar rate at the National Bank of Egypt jumped from around 31 pounds to 47 pounds, with fluctuations across different banks depending on market mechanisms.

A week later, at the Egyptian Women’s Day event during Ramadan, El-Sisi took a different tack, joking: “Don’t add too much sugar to the konafa and those desserts... you know... (El-Sisi laughs, as does the audience) Dr. Mostafa [Madbouly] went to get a million tons of sugar (he laughs again). I said to him, ‘A million tons of sugar?’ He said, ‘Because of the crisis and all.’ Fine, we’ll get a million tons of sugar.”

In April, during the annual Egyptian Family Iftar, El-Sisi acknowledged the scale of the economic crisis but refrained from offering solutions. Instead, he echoed public anxiety, again hammering his message home: “Even in this tough economic situation... everyone who depended on us was very, very worried. No doubt, the situation was difficult—and it still is difficult. Difficult—and it still is.”

This admission seems candid, but it also prepares the public for continued hardship without laying out a clear path forward.

The rapid shifts in tone—from warnings to reassurance, from describing Egypt as "a mess" to insisting "everything is moving forward," and back again to "the situation is still difficult"—create a disjointed official narrative.

If the crisis requires patience and sacrifice, why the insistence that solutions are just around the corner? If Egypt is on the road to recovery, why the repeated specter of collapse?

Between free markets and monopolies

The government has long professed its commitment to empowering the private sector, but El-Sisi’s remarks on Egyptian Women’s Day revealed doubts about the efficacy of the market. He suggested that the state may need to intervene: “Whether by reviving anti-monopoly agencies or stepping in ourselves—take two or three billion pounds and use them to buy goods. Let state institutions act to balance the market.”

El-Sisi conceded that market liberalization alone had failed to control prices. Despite the state being the main provider of dollars for imports, it now finds itself having to intervene directly in supply and pricing—a contradiction that underscores the policy dilemma between free-market advocacy and state-driven crisis management.

Massive spending as necessity

As questions mounted about large-scale public spending during an economic downturn, the president defended these decisions unequivocally. At the opening of the harvest season for the Future of Egypt project in May 2024, he said, “Well, public opinion, intellectuals, or media professionals say, ‘Where did you spend the money?’ Right? But I want to tell you something—I had no other options. No other options. Should we have left the country as it was—to fall apart? No. We had to suffer—Dr. Mostafa [Madbouly] knows this—from massive government and state spending so that this country could survive.”

El-Sisi emphasized again that his government had no alternatives, justifying major infrastructure investments as existential imperatives. Yet this narrative contradicts his own 2022 admission at the Economic Conference that the Damietta Furniture City project had failed because essential factors were left out of the planning process.

“We built the hangars and everything we thought was needed,” he said. “But did our people in Damietta show up, Dr. Essam? [addressing then housing minister, Essam El-Gazzar] No. Because we left out critical elements in the feasibility study.”

Infrastructure: burden or investment?

In May 2024, during the inauguration of a development project in New Valley governorate, El-Sisi again defended massive public investment: “Was the work we did on infrastructure necessary or excessive? It was necessary. We were forced to spend enormous sums. If it had been done over 20 or 25 years, for sure it would have cost less.”

He provided a dual justification: the projects were essential, and the economic climate demanded they be executed swiftly—despite the cost.

Amid continued economic pressure, the president remained unapologetic, asserting that the government had anticipated these difficulties and chosen this path deliberately.

At the opening of the Upper Egypt railway station in October 2024, he said: “Our choice was: do we build and accept difficult economic conditions? Or do we not build and leave this country with no future? This is the third time I say it, the third time—don’t think we weren’t aware of the hardship. No, we knew. But we chose to endure it so we could transform this country.”

The post-1967 economic crisis

In October, during the Tribal Union celebration of the 1973 victory, El-Sisi likened the current crisis to economic collapse following the 1967 defeat. “What you’re seeing now, right now—without going into too much explanation—is almost exactly what we experienced after 1967,” he said. 

Yet while the economic collapse of 1967 was tied to war and military defeat, today’s crisis stems from completely different roots: resource mismanagement and flawed economic policy.

Wavering between necessity and justification, what is the message of the president's speeches? In every speech El-Sisi gave about the economy, certain themes resurfaced: the crisis is severe, options are limited, large-scale spending is essential, and collective endurance is required to build the future.

But these repeated assertions leave key questions unanswered: Why has the crisis deepened despite massive infrastructure investments? And who bears true responsibility for Egypt’s current condition?

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^{(*)Al Manassa Arabic Edition publishes transcripts of all presidential speeches and statements under the Politics Section.}

^(**)El-Sisi likely meant billion, not million. Somalia’s GDP was $10.97 billion in 2023.

^(***)El-Sisi’s claim that Egypt’s economy grew at rates above 6% before 2020 is inaccurate. According to World Bank data, growth never exceeded 5.6% between 2014 and 2020.

^(****)A version of this article first appeared in Arabic on Feb. 18, 2025.