The Egyptian capital, Cairo, which has a population of 20 million and is known for its traffic congestion and climate pollution, suffers from a major transportation crisis, which emerging companies are trying to confront using technology.

There are polluting buses in poor condition, and only 3 metro lines, and public transport seems unable to meet the challenge.

Also, the problem cannot be addressed by the informal transportation system, such as minibuses, tuk-tuks, taxis, Uber, or even personal cars that roam the Egyptian capital, and there is no reliable count of their number.

Stifling crisis

Osama Aqeel, a professor specializing in traffic systems at Cairo University, says, "The traffic crisis in Greater Cairo is reflected in the average speed in its streets, which does not exceed 10 kilometers per hour."

Aqeel notes that the journey time from one place to another in the Egyptian capital can sometimes exceed 90 minutes, meaning that the return trip in the five working days per week may take 15 hours.

From shared trips in personal cars, to Uber, to traffic information, there are many applications to help Cairenes get around.

Given the chaotic situation, any technological renewal would be welcome.

Cairo is the most populous Arab city, where a fifth of Egyptians live (French)

Transportation map

Among the more ambitious startups, the ones that have created an app called Mwasalat for Cairo, whose designers have begun to map in-depth transportation routes in the city.

The director of the company, Mohamed Hegazy - who is one of its founders - told the French that "by drawing a map of the movement of means of transportation in major cities, and using this data for future planning, we hope that the situation will be resolved."

On the ground, teams affiliated with the project are counting all possible trips between all areas.

"We are working with the authorities to introduce a change in the transportation system," Hegazy added.

The World Bank and the Egyptian Ministry of Transport support this project, which aims to plan transportation routes in Cairo over the "next ten or twenty years."

clean energy

He continues that his project aims at a later stage to digitize and analyze the data to serve "the ultimate goal, which is to convert all transportation to clean energy to run all with electricity."

As for the "Ajara Wallet" company, it focuses on another aspect of the transportation problem, which is that about 500 million Egyptian pounds (about 31 million dollars) are traded daily through small currencies.

Khaled Khalil, the 30-year-old founder of this startup, hopes that "Ajra Wallet" will contribute to achieving digital transformation and dispensing with small currencies "by 2030."

"We are working to make the payment of transportation tariffs easier," he says, adding that liquid money has become a source of "danger" because it can transmit viruses such as Corona.

The company places advertisements on buses of mass transit companies, and uses the proceeds of these advertisements to reduce the tariff that passengers pay electronically.

A picture taken on February 22, 2021, of vehicles stuck in a traffic jam in the Ataba area in central Cairo (French)

A rejuvenating touch

The startup says it has added a touch of innovation in the area of ​​shared trips in personal cars.

"We have transformed the joint trips into social interviews," says Adel Al Mahrouqi (38 years old) - one of the founders of Tanak.

The young company is trying to help reduce the number of cars on the streets, through a system of collecting points and exchanging cash or fuel with them, in order to motivate car owners not to make the trip alone.

In 2014, a World Bank memo stated that 8 billion dollars are wasted every year due to delay and the cost of fuel, and the cost of air pollution represented 1% of the gross national product in 2013, and "traffic jams are the main cause of pollution resulting from transportation."

In order to reduce bottlenecks, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi decided to establish a new administrative capital east of Cairo, and the authorities are building bridges in several areas in Cairo, threatening at times to negatively affect the city's architectural heritage, but Aqeel believes that "the solution lies in (improving Public transportation.