Egypt is busily building expressways

THE NEW flyover in Giza, near Cairo, is something to behold. The road runs so close to the adjacent apartment buildings that some residents can reach out of their windows and touch it (see picture). One jokingly told a local newspaper that he would invite passing motorists in for tea on his balcony. But the road is more than just an object of ridicule. To many Egyptians, it is a symbol of their government’s ineptitude, as it pursues an ambitious national development plan.The scale of construction, which includes highways linking new and planned cities, is vast. In August the transport minister, Kamel al-Wazir, said 130bn Egyptian pounds ($8.3bn) had been allocated to complete 1,000 bridges and tunnels by 2024 (about 600 are already done). The goal is to double Egypt’s urban space over the next 30 years. President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, a former general, wants the work done quickly. Roughly a fifth of Egypt’s 100m citizens live in Cairo, the timeworn capital.