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A well-functioning media is a given part of any society, and can be a valuable tool in the democratising process of a country. The media is traditionally given the role of providing citizens with information about political events in society, and as a result enabling them to make informed decisions. Before the 1990s most of the Middle Eastern and North African media was controlled by governments and because of that they often failed in their responsibility as information providers. As new media such as the internet and satellite television were introduced to the region, the media paradigm shifted and a new arena for public debate arose and has continued to grow ever since. During the 2010-2011 uprisings in the region social media platforms were used by citizens to spread news about demonstrations and political moves, not only within countries, but also globally. Livestreaming applications in particular were used successfully, and videos filmed by citizen journalists were broadcast on international media channels This thesis focuses on the use of livestreaming by citizen journalists in Egypt and Syria to accomplish a social change, and on citizen journalism as an act of civic engagement. To provide an analytic frame, this thesis uses the work of Dahlgren (2009) and his six modes of civic engagement, to better and understand the role of citizen journalists in changing society. Through a number of qualitative interviews with citizen journalists, traditional journalists and Bambuser, this thesis concludes that citizen journalism did play and still plays an important role when it comes to civic engagement in Egypt and Syria although weather or not it might be able to take the role of traditional media in society remains to be seen. The interviews with citizen journalists were conducted in Cairo, Egypt and funded through a Minor Field Study grant.

This thesis deals with the recent adoption of the Sudanese curriculum at ‘refugee schools’ in Cairo, Egypt. It is based on material collected through qualitative research methods during two field studies. The aim of this paper is to describe how and why the Sudanese curriculum was introduced in Egypt, to outline refugees’ opinions about the curriculum and its adoption,and to analyze the role it plays in view of the overall context of this urban environment. In the theoretical framework, this thesis presents concepts regarding the phenomenon of ‘waiting’. The paper gives an overview of the specifics that refugees are confronted with in urban settings, and highlights the importance of education. Moreover, the thesis presents background information about refugees living in Egypt and their access to rights, and pointsout the obstacles they face regarding public education. The results of this study show that the new curriculum is valued by students, teachers, and parents, as it offers the opportunity to acquire official school documents that are required to enter university. A number of aspects that refugees criticize about the Sudanese curriculum, such as its contents, are also brought up. This thesis concludes that the Sudanese curriculum plays a significant role for refugees in Egypt, as it gives students perspectives for the future and thus has a positive effect on their experience of waiting.

<p>Please contact the author with any questions. A compressed tar.b2z file is attached with the groundwater model input files.</p> / <p>Wadi El Naturn, located in the Western Desert in northern Egypt, has been subject to significant groundwater degradation since the 1990s, attributed primarily to agricultural development. Information required to diagnose the drivers of groundwater degradation and assess management options in dryland environments like Wadi El Natrun is however, frequently sparse. This research presents an approach for modeling the impacts of dryland environmental change on groundwater in the context of sparse data. A focus is placed on understanding the potential impacts of conservation strategies in the context of climate change. Water use, hydrostratigraphic and groundwater flow data were collected from literature, monitoring records, satellite imagery and a survey of local landholders. MODFLOW-NWT was used to model the multi-layer aquifer system, and algorithms were developed in R to create realizations of groundwater recharge, and well-pumping at a monthly time-step from 1957 to 2011. The model was deemed to be reasonably capable of capturing the cumulative impact of environmental change over this historical period. A risk assessment approach was then used to assess the impact of climate change and conservation-focused management scenarios on groundwater locally over a 50-year future planning horizon. The optimization of irrigation systems and increased cultivation of drought/salt tolerant crops have the potential to significantly reduce the risk of groundwater depletion compared to an across-the-board 20% water use reduction scenario. The influence of groundwater pumping also outweighed that of climate change, and the most vulnerable water users/ecosystem were found to be the most exposed to groundwater degradation.</p> / Master of Applied Science (MASc)

<p>Egypt's first Five-Year Plan 1960/61 - 1964/65 charted a program for economic development based on industrialization via import substitution and self-sufficiency. The Plan was not designed on the basis of a comprehensive model and therefore could not take account of many interdependencies, nor was it possible to determine if the Plan was consistent with resource supplies. Unfortunately such aspects were considered only in a piecemeal fashion. Moreover, the selection of investment projects was based on the assumption that labour is abundantly available. The Plan envisaged an overall growth in value added of 40 percent during the 5-year period and an equilibrium in the balance of trade by the terminal year. Although the growth target was nearly achieved, the trade deficit increased instead of disappearing.</p> <p>This study represents an endeavour to remedy the shortcomings of the Egyptian planning practice as represented by the country's first Five-Year Plan in two ways. First, a comprehensive linear programming model was developed to assist in the choice of industries where capacity can be expanded to the optimum advantage. Second, alternate assumptions were introduced with regard to labour based on the observable fact that although unskilled labour is abundantly available, only skilled labour is required for an overall effort of economic development. Thus, a set of labour constraints by industry was incorporated into the model. This implies a given and well-defined pattern of skill requirements by industry. Simulations based on the linear programming model indicated that the neglect of labour leads to a bias in project selection in favour of investments with a relatively high foreign-exchange content. Some of these simulations also resulted in a pattern of expansion stressing agriculture, food processing and fertilizers in contrast with the Plan's emphasis on metals, machinery and chemicals.</p> <p>The study also analyzes the interdependencies in the Egyptian structure of production. One of the conclusions of the analysis in this context is that agriculture occupies a very central place in the economy, and in fact constitutes a bottleneck industry. The finding that agriculture is very important contrasts sharply with the secondary place it occupies in the country's priorities, judged from its first Five-Year Plan. Two consistency tests were performed, one to check the compatibility of the individual sectoral output targets and the other to check the consistency of the overall-growth and the balance-of-trade targets. The individual industry output targets turned out to be inconsistent, which seems to suggest that indirect relationships between the different industries were not carefully considered.The overall-growth target and the balance-of-trade target appeared inconsistent, which seems to suggest either that the planners neglected indirect import requirements or that they overestimated the economy's capacity to replace pbout one-third of the target year imports</p> <p>Two other aspects of the Egyptian structure of production were also examined utilizing input-output data for 1954 and 1963/64. One is to determine if that structure exhibits any recursivity. This was done by triangularizing the input-output coefficient matrix, and revealed that indeed there is a discernible hierarchy in the system of production. The other aspect examined was the degree of dependence, in production, on the rest of the world. The analysis here entailed deriving numerical values for the direct, indirect and total (direct plus indirect) import coefficients. The numerical results indicate clearly that the industries heavily stressed in Egypt's first Five-Year Plan (metals, machinery and chemicals) are heavily dependent on imports for their current production requirements. If, to this, imported investment requirements for capacity expansion are added, we can then determine one of the important reasons why the balance of trade equilibrium was not achieved.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This thesis examines of the religious and philosophical origins of racism, arguing that anti-black, anti-African racism has its origins in the biblical account of the ancient Israelites’ exodus from Egypt and the events recounted in the Hebrew scriptures. It begins with an examination of the nature of racism itself, considering how the contemporary experience of and scholarship about racism can illuminate the search for racism’s historical origins. Contemporary experience has taught us that the functioning of racism often operates independently of the explicit racial prejudice coupled with power once thought to comprise it. This understanding has been reflected in scholarship that has examined how racism has functioned through hierarchical discourse, a concept which is defined and analyzed at some length. Following this examination comes a “genealogical” tracing of hierarchical discourse about African phenomena in the Western-dominated academy, leading to the centrality of the religious concept of idolatry in the making of racist accounts of African phenomena. Finally, the thesis concludes with a chapter on the mytho-historical exodus event, which gave birth to this concept of idolatry, analyzing the meaning and significance of the event in the making of racist discourse. This thesis demonstrates that a broader understanding of racism as an outgrowth of a worldview necessarily hostile to alternatives, when applied to the study of the historical development of racism, paints a far more convincing and complete portrait of the origins of racism, its historical development, and its present functioning than studies based on a more narrow understanding of racism. / African American Studies