Many accept the significance of Egypt’s late President Hosni Mubarak as a military leader—he had contributed to the victory in the October War-- but as head of state for 30 years, he had failures in several areas, the most important of which was health, education and fighting corruption.
In an interview with Egypt’s state television in 2014, Nobel Prize-winning chemist Ahmed Zewail said that education in the African state had taken a hit in the last three decades.
Zewail noted that the increasing number of students had helped make matters worse for the floundering education system.
During the rule of Mubarak, the then head of the Shura Council’s Education and Scientific Research Committee Farouk Ismail made statements similar to Zewail’s on November 7, 2009.
“Education in Egypt lacks a long-term strategy,” Farouk had said at a presser.
This was reflected in international data on Egypt’s education systems.
According to the World Education Quality Index, issued by the World Economic Forum in Davos, Egypt in 2009-2010 ranked 79 out of 137 countries, and in 2010-2011 it ranked 78 out of 138 countries.
Hatem al-Jabali, the last health minister in a cabinet under Mubarak’s rule, had admitted to failures in the health sector in an interview back in 2010.
“We have to admit that government hospitals do not provide good service or respectful treatment,”Jabali said.
Failure in the education and health sectors is linked to the inability to fight corruption which prevailed dominantly during Mubarak’s rule. Egypt’s ranking in the corruption index issued by Transparency International in 2009 was 115 out of 180 countries.
