24-04-2025
Mark your calendars: Egypt's daylight saving time takes effect this Friday at midnight
Late evening in Cairo: view of the Qasr al-Nil Bridge and the Cairo Tower at sunset – Wikimedia Commons/Frank Schulenburg
CAIRO – 24 April 2025: On Friday, 25 April, at the stroke of midnight across Egypt, it is time to set the clock forward by one hour as we welcome back the daylight-saving time, which has been cancelled late in October.
In a move aimed at cutting down power usage, Egypt reintroduced daylight-saving time in 2023 after a seven-year hiatus. The question of whether this actually makes a dent in electricity consumption is up for debate.
The Cabinet earlier stated that applying daylight-saving time helps save around 10% of energy. Meanwhile, the House of Representatives pointed to studies in 2016 suggesting that the impact on energy savings is minimal besides its messing with people's internal clocks.
The idea behind daylight-saving time is not just about tweaking clocks; it is also about reducing fuel imports, which weigh heavily on the Egyptian economy and foreign currency reserves.
Egypt has been working hard to bolster its foreign reserves and hold onto its hard-earned currency, especially in light of the ongoing regional crises.
The Red Sea tensions that coincided with the Israeli war in Gaza, ongoing since October 2023, has caused the Suez Canal to suffer a loss of nearly 60% of its income in 2024, amounting to around $7 billion.
To conserve energy, Egypt rolled out a load-shedding program in the summer of 2023, but thankfully managed to wrap it up a year later once the necessary fuel supplies were secured.
As the clocks change, take a breather and catch up on your Zs to bridge the gap between your body clock (which follows the sun) and your social clock (dictated by society).
And while your clock moves forward by an hour, do not forget that your work routine and appointments within the country will likely stick to their usual schedule.
Do not fret about adjusting your laptop and mobile phone clocks; in most cases, they will update automatically.
