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Al-Ahram Weekly
10-05-2025
- Business
- Al-Ahram Weekly
Developing Egypt's date industry - Features - Al-Ahram Weekly
Throughout this year's Ramadan season, ordinarily the peak for date sales in Egypt, a state of stagnation was apparent in the market, according to Mohamed Ibrahim, a wholesale date trader. The increase in date production this year, which exceeded the needs of the domestic market, has led to a 40 per cent drop in prices compared to the previous year. Many buyers have also shown a preference for imported varieties, as these may be produced and packaged to higher quality standards, causing a decline in demand for many of the lower-quality types grown locally. After the Ramadan season, preparations commence for the next production cycle. According to Ibrahim, September marks the harvest of fresh dates, alongside the production of various sun-dried and frozen varieties, completing their maturation from raw fruit to fully ripened dates before being stored. By the time Ramadan approaches, the dates have been meticulously prepared and sold to exporters and companies that incorporate them into food products. The largest share, however, is allocated to local consumption, passing through major traders who distribute them to wholesalers before they ultimately reach retailers and consumers. 'This year, date prices have fallen compared to the previous year, despite rising fuel costs which have driven up transportation expenses,' Ibrahim said. 'As certain varieties require refrigeration from harvest time until they are sold, storage costs have also increased. But the price decline stems from the continued expansion of date cultivation and large-scale production, resulting in a surplus that exceeds local demand and leading to a slowdown in sales.' 'Many wholesalers who invested in Aswan dates last year, bearing the costs of transportation and storage in anticipation of higher returns, have incurred substantial financial losses, as prices have declined sharply due to abundant supply.' According to Mahmoud Khedr, a professor of agriculture at the National Research Centre (NRC) in Cairo, Egypt ranks first globally in date production, yielding approximately 1.9 million tons annually, with nearly 17 million palm trees. Egypt's date production surpasses that of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Algeria, Iraq, and the UAE, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). 'There are three main types of dates, including soft varieties characterised by high moisture content, semi-dry varieties with a moderate moisture level, and dry varieties distinguished by their low moisture content. Egypt benefits from a diverse climate that is highly conducive to palm cultivation and the production of all types of dates,' Khedr said. 'In the governorates of Luxor and Aswan, dry date varieties such as Bartamoda and Sakkoty are grown, for example. In Siwa, the Bahariya Oasis, and the New Valley, semi-dry varieties such as Siwy and others are cultivated. Soft varieties such as Bent-Eisha, Samany, and Hayany are grown in governorates like Alexandria, Damietta, and Giza.' 'The distribution is approximately 52 per cent soft dates, 20 per cent semi-dry dates, and three per cent dry dates, and nearly 25 per cent seedling varieties that do not belong to any of the main categories,' he said. 'Although Egypt ranks first in terms of date production, its exports remain minimal. Last year, date exports did not exceed 50,000 tons, for example, attributed to one of the key criticisms of palm cultivation in Egypt, which is the decline in quality. This in turn is linked to several factors, most notably the failure to implement good agricultural practices and the widespread presence of low-quality seedling date varieties.' Khedr stressed the need to apply better agricultural practices in order to open export markets for Egyptian dates. 'It is essential to implement a comprehensive set of practices to improve productivity, preserve existing palm trees, and consequently enhance production, quality, and yield. The first of these practices is proper pruning, as many palm plantations, particularly those in the Bahariya Oasis, do not carry this out. Neglecting it increases the risk of infestation by the red palm weevil and, over time, shortens the expected lifespan of the trees.' Following the pruning process, Khedr recommends preventive measures against weevil infestation, such as spraying insecticides or dusting with agricultural sulphur, especially since the weevils often appear after pruning. Next comes the removal of weeds, a step that many farms overlook, though it is an important one as weeds compete with palm trees and other crops for water and nutrients in the soil. Additionally, they act as hosts and attractants for insects, and some insects secrete substances that hinder root growth, which negatively affects crop productivity. BEST PRACTICES: Obtaining dates of high quality in sufficient amounts requires significant effort and a series of precise steps that must be executed by farmers at specific times, Khedr explained. For example, if a farmer does not climb the male palm tree to collect pollen and then the female tree to pollinate the flowers, the female palm will produce a type of yellow date with low economic value that can only be sold at low prices. Growing dates, regardless of their variety, requires human intervention, as the date palm is a dioecious plant, meaning it is either male or female. Additionally, palms are not attractive to insects, which usually play the role of transferring pollen for plant reproduction. 'One of the common mistakes that hinders the quality and productivity of date palms is when large farms with around 3,000 palms employ only a few workers to complete the pollination process. Reducing the number of workers leads to longer pollen transfer times. Since female flowers can only receive pollen for a maximum of six days, after this period the pollen becomes ineffective. As a result, no fruit is formed, leading to a reduced yield,' Khedr said. 'It is essential properly to select pollen from male palms to achieve excellent fruit after ensuring their colour, length, diameter, and sugar content meet the required standards to produce dates of the same quality. In Egypt, high-quality male date palm varieties have started to spread and play a role in increasing production and improving quality.' 'Besides fruit quality, the seedling varieties also pose one of the biggest challenges to date exports, as they account for 26 per cent of Egypt's date production. Seedling varieties are less desirable for export and are of lower quality compared to main varieties. Investors have begun to avoid planting these seedlings, replacing them with high-quality varieties that are in demand on the market at higher prices. Awareness campaigns organised by the NRC are educating farmers about varieties with high marketing and economic value,' Khedr said. 'It is customary to plant palm trees using palm offsets, with each palm producing between 10 and 15 offsets throughout its life and growing directly under the tree. Planting them offers several advantages. For example, the farmer can identify the type of palm that will grow, something that cannot be known when planting seeds, which may result in an undesired variety. Moreover, a palm grown from a seed will take many years to bear fruit and to determine whether the tree is male or female. It is crucial to know the palm's sex, as a male palm can pollinate up to 25 female palms. Therefore, on a farm with 100 palms, only four male palms will be needed.' 'As a result, planting offsets remains the preferred option, as the farmer knows the palm's sex and the type of its fruit before planting and can begin harvesting fruit within just three years,' he added. Khedr said that there are other best practices sometimes neglected by farmers. 'One of the essential best practices for date palms, often neglected by farmers, is the adjustment and strengthening of the date bunch stalks to prevent them from breaking and causing premature fruit to drop before ripening,' he said. As the fruit grows and its size increases, the weight also increases, making it necessary to tie the stalk to the palm fronds to prevent it from breaking and causing the dates to fall, which reduces the crop yield. There is also the process of removing the fruit, where the farmer removes some of the lower-quality fruit to allow the better dates to receive more nutrients and fertilisers. While the total number of dates decreases, the quality and size of the remaining fruit improves. Larger and higher-quality dates can be sold at higher prices.' 'There are also some common misconceptions among farmers that can harm the palm trees. For example, some believe that irrigating the plants surrounding the palm will be sufficient, but this is a mistake. A palm requires additional amounts of water, approximately three per cent of its annual water needs in winter and up to 14 per cent in summer. Similarly, some farmers think that fertilising the plants around the palm tree benefits it, but a date palm requires a significant amount of nutrients. These include nitrogen, potassium, magnesium, and other essential elements, which can easily be depleted as a palm can produce an average of 60 kg of dates a year,' Khedr said. 'Once the fruit has been fertilised and its growth properly ensured, the process of bagging the date bunches must begin. This involves the farmer climbing the palm tree and covering the bunches of dates with bags to protect them from dust and rain and preventing the fruit from becoming mouldy. This practice also helps to ensure high-quality dates.' According to Khedr, these best practices are being applied at the world's largest date palm farm in the Toshka area of Egypt. The farm was established on the orders of President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi on an area of about 40,000 feddans. It grows all the Egyptian varieties, as well as varieties grown in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, including Al-Segai, Kholas, and Agwa Al-Madina, all of which have also recently been introduced to Egypt. 'The farm is in the Guinness Book of World Records and is expected to include around 2.5 million palms. Currently, 1.8 million palms have been planted, and approximately 700,000 more are being planted. The farm includes varieties that are in demand in Europe, East Asia, and some of the Gulf countries. Efforts are underway to export at least 40 per cent of the farm's production,' Khedr said. Markets: According to Mustafa Assous, head of the Date Palm Processing Department at the Central Date Palm Lab at the Agricultural Research Centre, in addition to exports, creating a larger market for dates and using Egypt's abundant production is eminently possible, especially after the implementation of best agricultural practices. With the government's enhanced focus on the agricultural and food industries, Egypt can successfully localise its date industry. 'More than half of Egypt's date production consists of soft varieties, which spoil quickly and require refrigeration. Incorporating them into the food industry will preserve them from spoilage and add value. There are many date-based products in demand, such as date syrup, date paste (which we currently import), date juice, and other products,' Assous said. 'There are also many semi-dry varieties, such as Upper Egyptian dates, which we export in large quantities and can be incorporated into food products and exported at a higher value. As for dry varieties, these can be processed into date powder or date sugar, which is added to baked goods and other food products.' 'We have more than 15 million date palms in Egypt, and date palm cultivation is growing in Africa and Asia, especially in countries like Thailand, India, China, and Namibia. But Egyptian farmers continue to plant more palms. Focusing on improving date quality through good agricultural practices and replacing undesirable palm varieties is more important than expanding palm cultivation without planning,' he said. 'Even with good agricultural practices in place and higher export rates, some varieties, like dry dates, are still not accepted in markets such as the European ones. Therefore, the benefit lies in incorporating dates into food products.' 'The other issue that must be considered is that many dates can spoil or become infested with weevils due to poor storage. Dates should be frozen and stored at low temperatures, depending on their moisture content. Additionally, date varieties should be sorted before packaging and well-wrapped to protect them from dust and insect infestation, similar to the many date brands that are imported and sold in the Egyptian market, which enjoy high demand despite their high prices.' 'After the establishment of the country's largest date farm in Toshka, this should be followed by refrigerated storage facilities and a factory complex that can incorporate dates into higher-value food products. This will reduce the need to import such processed food products using hard currency and will also generate more foreign currency when exporting processed dates rather than raw agricultural products,' Assous concluded. * A version of this article appears in print in the 8 May, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly Follow us on: Facebook Instagram Whatsapp Short link:
Barnama
24-04-2025
- Business
- Barnama
UTP Leaps In Times Higher Education Asia Rankings, Maintains Top Spot In Malaysia
GENERAL KUALA LUMPUR, April 24 (Bernama) -- Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (UTP) has reached a new milestone in its journey towards becoming a world-class institution, breaking into the Top 50 for the first time in the latest edition of the Times Higher Education Asia University Rankings. UTP, in a statement, said it is now the highest-ranked Malaysian university, securing the 43rd position, up from 52nd last year, while retaining its title as the number one university in Malaysia and private university in ASEAN. Its vice chancellor, Prof Datuk Dr Mohamed Ibrahim Abdul Mutalib, said the recognition reflects UTP's continuous commitment to academic excellence, impactful research and global collaboration. 'This achievement is a testament to the relentless drive of our staff, students and partners to push boundaries in research, innovation and education. We are immensely proud to represent Malaysia on the regional and global stage,' he was quoted as saying in the statement today. The rankings assess the world's best research-intensive universities based on five pillars: teaching, research environment, research quality, knowledge transfer and international outlook. The statement added that UTP's sharp rise reflects its growing impact in multidisciplinary research, industry partnerships and academic excellence. Mohamed Ibrahim said UTP's next phase would focus on solving real-world challenges through deeper collaboration with global institutions, industries and governments. 'We are investing in frontier research, transdisciplinary programmes and digital-first learning experiences to ensure our graduates thrive in a world that's changing faster than ever,' he said. UTP said its forward-looking initiatives include the Bachelor of Integrated Engineering with Honours programme, which is scheduled to commence in September this year.
Asharq Al-Awsat
25-03-2025
- Politics
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Inside Sudan's Presidential Palace in Khartoum…Fresh Blood and Destruction
At the battle-scarred presidential palace in the heart of Sudan's shattered capital, soldiers gathered under a chandelier on Sunday afternoon, rifles and rocket launchers slung over their shoulders, listening to their orders. Then they trooped out, down a red carpet that once welcomed foreign dignitaries, and into the deserted center of the city on a mission to flush out the last pockets of resistance from the paramilitary fighters with whom they have been clashing for two years. Since Sudan's military captured the presidential palace on Friday, in a fierce battle that left hundreds dead, it has taken control of most of central Khartoum, marking a momentous change of fortunes that is likely to change the course of Sudan's ruinous civil war. By Sunday, the military had seized the Central Bank, the headquarters of the national intelligence service and the towering Corinthia Hotel along the Nile. Journalists from The New York Times were the first from a Western outlet to cross the Nile, into central Khartoum, or to visit the palace, since the war erupted in April 2023. 'What we saw there made clear how decisively the events of recent days have shifted the direction of the war, but offered little hope that it will end soon,' they said. Mohamed Ibrahim, a special forces officer, said 'We will never leave our country to the mercenaries,' referring to the RSF — the paramilitary force. As our vehicle raced down a deserted street along the Nile that until a few days ago had been controlled by the RSF, the scale of the damage in one of Africa's biggest cities was starkly evident. Trees lining the road had been stripped bare by explosions. A mosque was peppered with gunfire. Towering ministries and office blocks, some built with money from Sudan's vast reserves of oil and gold, were burned to a shell. The military headquarters, where a group of senior generals were trapped for the first 18 months of the war, had been shredded by bombs. Khartoum University, once a hub of political debate, had been looted. And an area where tens of thousands of young Sudanese mounted a popular uprising in 2019 that ousted the country's leader, President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, was deserted. All that remained of those hopeful times was a handful of faded, bullet-pocked murals. Instead, some of those pro-democracy protesters have picked up guns to fight in the war; they were assembled in the ruins of the presidential palace on Sunday. The Chinese-built presidential palace, only a few years ago shared by the country's warring military leaders, had been reduced to a battered husk. Dust and debris covered ministerial suites and state rooms. Ceilings had collapsed. Gaping holes looked out over the Nile. On the grounds of an older palace next door, erected a century ago by British colonists, soldiers napped under the charred arches of a bombed-out building. Piles of bloodstained rubble on the palace steps testified to the ferocity of the battle on Friday. On the steps of the palace, a fresh bloodstain marked the spot where an RSF drone-fired missile had killed four employees from Sudanese state TV and two military officers on Friday morning. As the military closed in, the RSF leader, Lt. Gen. Mohammed Hamdan, issued a video message imploring his troops to stand their ground. When the final assault began, at least 500 paramilitary fighters were still inside, several officers said. But when they tried to flee, they ran into deadly ambushes. A video filmed half a mile from the palace, and verified by The Times, showed dozens of bodies scattered along a street, beside incinerated or bullet-pocked vehicles. 'This is the season for hunting mice,' declared the officer who took the video, dating it to Saturday. RSF fighters stationed on Tuti Island, at the confluence of the Blue Nile and White Nile Rivers, tried to flee on boats, soldiers said. It was unclear how many escaped. Without offering details, a Sudanese military spokesman said that 'hundreds' of paramilitary fighters had been killed. But dozens of the military's forces also died, soldiers said privately, in RSF drone attacks and in other fighting. Alan Boswell, director of the Horn of Africa project at the International Crisis Group, said it was 'just a matter of time' before Sudan's military took the entire city, forcing the RSF to retreat to its stronghold in the western region of Darfur. 'Quite a fall from where they were for the first year and a half of the war, when they held most of Khartoum,' Boswell said. Few believe the war is nearing an end, though. Both the RSF and the Sudanese military are backed by powerful foreign powers that have poured weapons into Sudan over the past two years. Sudan's deputy leader, Malik Agar, recently estimated that there are now 36 million small arms in the country, which had a prewar population of 48 million.
Al Bawaba
22-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Al Bawaba
Mohamed Ramadan celebrates mother's day with heartwarming visit to Elderly Home
ALBAWABA - Egyptian actor and singer Mohamed Ramadan marked Mother's Day with a heartfelt gesture by spending the occasion at a care home for the elderly, as featured in the 21st episode of his Ramadan program, 'Madfa' Ramadan.' Airing after iftar, the special episode saw Ramadan surprise residents by celebrating the day with them and releasing his new song 'Bethallawi'—a touching tribute to mothers, written by Mohamed Ibrahim, composed by Ibrahim Ihab Abdel Wahid, and arranged by Nader Hamdy. In a sincere message, Ramadan shared, 'This is a happy day for every mother, but a difficult one for those who have lost theirs. We pray for their peace and mercy.' He added, 'Today, we celebrate both Mother's Day and the mother of all—Egypt.' The artist expressed joy at being surrounded by the elderly women, saying, 'I felt true happiness in their faces, and it's like I gained more mothers today.' A lighthearted moment occurred when one resident humorously proposed marriage to him, saying, 'I want to marry Mohamed Ramadan.' He replied with a laugh, 'I always have a marriage officiant with me since my role in 'Gaafar El-Omda.'' Ramadan emphasized his commitment to connecting with people across the country, stating that he had told United Media Services during contract discussions, 'I'm ready to go anywhere in Egypt to bring joy to people.' The episode, blending warmth and laughter, resonated deeply with audiences and showcased a different side of the star, using his platform to honor the elderly and spread positivity on a meaningful national day.
Tahawul Tech
12-02-2025
- Business
- Tahawul Tech
LAHINT secures SAR 4 Million pre-seed funding during LEAP 2025
LAHINT, a leading company specializing in government services automation, has successfully closed its SAR 4 million Pre-Seed funding round on the second day of its participation in the LEAP 2025 global conference in Riyadh. The company reaffirmed its strategic goal of automating 50 government services by 2027, positioning LAHINT as the go-to platform for individuals and businesses seeking seamless government transactions. Additionally, LAHINT aims to strengthen its partnerships with government entities to align with its strategic objectives and support Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 for economic and digital transformation. LAHINT's platform features an advanced verification system based on Saudi legal and regulatory databases, allowing users to receive instant, AI-powered eligibility consultations for free, without the complexities of navigating government services. Furthermore, the platform enables fully automated service execution for end-users through integration with various government portals, ensuring faster and more efficient digital public services. LAHINT has gained both local and international recognition, having been featured in the 2024 annual report of Saudi Venture Capital (SVC) as one of the most promising startups in the Kingdom. It was also named Saudi Arabia's Best Startup of 2024, reflecting its growing impact in the tech and innovation sector. The LAHINT Board of Directors comprises experienced leaders from both the public and private sectors, including: Mohamed Ibrahim – CEO Khaled Alsulami – Chief Strategy Officer Ahmed Saber – Chief Technology Officer Tariq AlJabr – Chief Business Development Officer Ziyad Alsulais – Chief Commercial Officer With a diverse team of experts across government and private sectors, LAHINT is positioned to redefine the government services experience using AI-driven automation and advanced digital technologies. The company has also graduated from Misk (Mohammed bin Salman Foundation) in October 2023 and successfully completed the Sanabil Startup Unlocked by the 500 Global program in December 2024, further strengthening its position as a key player in the region's digital transformation. Image Credit: LAHINT
