Population distribution: follow the Nile

Sébastien Oliveau, Yoann Doignon et Isabelle Blöss-Widmer

p. 56-57


Texte intégral

6,500,00013th8.6 %1,394 inhabitant/km2
Number of inhabitants in 1882most populous country in the world in 2017of national territory home to the resident population in 2017Average density of the inhabited area in 2018
Source: CAPMAS

1As a result of the significant demographic growth that Egypt experienced during the second half of the 20th century the population will soon exceed 100 million. Egypt is the third most populous country in Africa after Nigeria and Ethiopia. Despite an average density of almost 100 inhabitants per km2, Egypt is very largely desert.

Very uneven density

2As regards the spatial distribution of its population, Egypt is one of a kind. The country is a desert zone, like its neighbour Libya, with an extremely arid climate that has always limited the settlement and development of populations outside those areas that are irrigated by the Nile. Where water can be found, population density increases, as is the case along the banks of the Nile and into the Delta, in the Fayum and a few other oasis. The concentration of humanity is extreme in such areas: rural density currently exceeds 1,000 inhabitants/km2, which is unique outside Asia.

3The Nile shapes settlement. Outside the valley, the population is mainly to be found in the oases, the coastal towns of the Red Sea and along the Mediterranean shore. In the Delta and Nile Valley, settlement is fixed in very dense and regularly distributed villages: society has optimised its territory in response to the restricted environment. Each plot of cultivable land is used and the spread of housing is limited. This optimisation of the land has restricted urban sprawl in the countryside and produced very regular and very dense implantations. For the same reason, housing is tightly set around the principal highways. This has resulted in a very regular distribution of the size of settlement units. These are organised in a hierarchical manner according to population and following a logic known to geographers as “central place theory*”.

3.10 Population density in Egypt

Image

A stable system of towns

4The regularity of the urban framework is remarkable. The grid of towns is distinguished by its antiquity and lack of change, with Cairo in the role of capital, in which political and economic power are concentrated. The urban hierarchy is decidedly top-heavy: Greater Cairo held 24.4 million inhabitants in 2018, while Alexandria, the second city of the country, had only 5.2 million, some way ahead of the next in line: Port Said (749,371), Suez (728,180), Ismailia (384,351), Damietta (281,493) and Luxor (242,375).

5The map of the urban system reveals this ‘bigheadedness’. Even when considered in a restricted fashion (only the urban continuum is taken into account on the map), Cairo balloons out from the apex of the Delta. Towns are strung along the Nile as it runs through the desert whereas the Delta displays a much more regular organisation. A few small towns can be found along the coasts and in the desert. These are generally administrative centres, some of which might count 5,000 inhabitants (e.g. Madinat Abu Simbel, Madinat Balat).

Rural/urban: a definition to be reconsidered

6The Egyptian census appears to be efficient at counting and locating the population, but the definition of population settlement is more complicated. Successive governments have defined the status of settled communities in a politico-administrative manner. As a result, there are “villages” that are home to several tens of thousands of inhabitants and there are “towns” with less than 10,000. Aside from any descriptions, a more in-depth analysis of the dynamics at work will require a more detailed review of the data, an agglomeration of neighbouring territories that constitute continuous urbanised zones, and a hard look at the reality of rural and urban.

7The process of urbanisation is increasingly overwhelming administrative control and state planning directives. It is happening from the bottom up, within villages that are inclined towards a continuous spatial settlement expansion. While Cairo remains the very centre of the concentrated national populace, the rest of the country is linked to the city, laying out a “village-city” pattern as encapsulated in the Desakota* concept first coined by Terry McGee. The Egyptian inhabited area is now continuous and largely urban. The contrast with the extensive and privatised occupation of the desert margins, given over to income generation (agriculture for export, tourism, the oil sector) or reserved for the wealthiest is all the more striking.


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