Egypt: building an information society for international development

This article examines Egypt's attempt to build an information society for international development as defined by four key variables: an IT infrastructure, a knowledge economy, a public culture of discursive openness, and formal legal institutions which support the digital age. The main finding is that given serious infrastructural challenges, as well as a tendency towards political and economic centralisation, the efforts of a series of government-led projects are unlikely to affect all but the top of the Egyptian social pyramid for the immediate future.