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Egypt's President Urges Family Planning
Nagib Mohammed Ahmed, left, said he has five children. "It's not our fault for having the kids," Ahmed said. "It's the government's fault for not providing."
(By Ellen Knickmeyer -- The Washington Post)
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At a watermelon stand, Nagib Mohammed Ahmed, 60, leaned in the shade of a street kiosk. He said he had five children and went out each day to look for odd jobs to pay for their food and education.
"It's not our fault for having the kids," Ahmed said. "It's the government's fault for not providing. This country is full of resources, but the government takes it all."
He said he hoped his children would have two children per family at the most. "It's too expensive," he said.
Islam does not prohibit contraception, and Egypt has had aggressive birth-control campaigns in the past. TV ads in the 1990s urged condom use, showing a small family ascending into prosperity and a large one descending into poverty.
Egypt's economy has grown by 6 to 7 percent annually in recent years, and the nation has received billions of dollars in foreign investment. At least 40 percent of the people remain in poverty or close to it, according to international institutions.
Child labor is a fact of life for Egypt's poor, and the wages children earn can determine whether families eat or go hungry.
"A man who is poor and who is possibly married to one or two or three or four wives, for him it is a very prosperous plan to get five, six, a half-dozen, a dozen children. It is a source of income," said Milad Hanna, an urbanization and population expert in Cairo.
"People listen to the president, but they don't follow his recommendation, because it is an absolute social and economic necessity for them to have children," Hanna said.
How does Egypt solve the problem? Under current conditions, it doesn't, Hanna said.
"The problem is unsolvable."
