Latest news with #CairoScene
CairoScene
5 days ago
- Politics
- CairoScene
WATCH: Amani Al-Khatahtbeh on ‘The Muslim Girl' Reckoning
'We lost a lot of sponsorships and partners that claimed to be allies after October 7th,' the Muslim Girl's founder shares. For over a decade, Muslim Girl has been the internet's loudest answer to a simple, loaded question: What does it mean to be a Muslim woman online? Founded by Palestinian-American Amani Al-Khatahtbeh at just 17, the platform has grown into a living archive of Muslim identity in the digital age. 'The most powerful thing about social media and being online is that it completely removes the borders between us,' author, activist, and Muslim Girl founder Amani Al-Khatahtbeh tells CairoScene. She knows those borders well. Raised in New Jersey with Palestinian roots, Amani experienced firsthand how Western media distorted her sense of self. 'I grew up through a lot of media propaganda trying to shove down my throat who I was, where I came from.' Being a visibly Muslim girl in the West, the platform was born from a deep need to see herself reflected in media, to find other girls like her. Muslim Girl became more than a blog; it became a communal space and a cultural record. 'We created a real-time chronicle of the evolution of our identities from the past decade,' she reflects. Today, Amani is not just a founder; she's a media force. Named a media titan by The New York Times, she leads what is now the largest platform for Muslim women in the U.S. But everything changed after October 7th. In the wake of Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza, Muslim Girl took a firm stand, centring Palestinian human rights. That choice came at a cost. 'We lost a lot of sponsorships… partners that claimed to be allies suddenly took a step back,' Amani says. 'It created a very big reckoning for us, about what our values and priorities as a company really are.' The censorship, defunding, and corporate silence didn't quiet her; they sharpened her. Amani is now leading Muslim Girl into a new era, one rooted in justice, international law, and lasting advocacy. 'We live in a world where we have international court cases using social media and blogs as actual evidence for the first time… We are setting new precedents.' What started as a personal blog is now a legal tool. Once laughed at for referencing it in job applications, Amani is now using that same blog as the foundation for her academic work, currently earning a degree in international human rights law at Oxford University. She's interrogating policy, one post at a time. 'I'm excited about entering into this new era,' she says, 'where we can really strengthen the advocacy work… and push for the sanctity of our communities moving forward.' With over 1.5 million followers across platforms, Muslim Girl has become a global voice for Muslim women. And as narratives shift and institutions are challenged, it stands firm in its day-one ethos: to represent—and become—that Muslim girl, both online and on the ground.
CairoScene
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- CairoScene
This Content Creator Brings Classical Arabic Poetry to the Digital Age
This Content Creator Brings Classical Arabic Poetry to the Digital Age At the intersection of heritage and the algorithm, one creator is proving that classical Arabic poetry truly is timeless. Between the soft clink of rings and the mundane rhythm of daily errands, content creator Hala is reviving classical Arabic poetry over social media. Her videos, set to the backdrop of car rides and gentle routines, unspool the linguistic richness of Qabbani and Al-Mutanabbi with a modern cadence, reframing classical verse for a generation raised on scrolls and swipes. As the eldest daughter in an Arab household in the US, Hala's first encounters with classical Arabic weren't through textbooks, but through the melismatic qasidas of singers like Nagat Al Saghira. 'My dad would play them on roadtrips,' Hala tells CairoScene. 'The songs are all super long, the shortest is probably 40 minutes. I was so curious: 'What are they saying?' 'What does it mean?' I would watch him being moved by the music, and I would think: 'She's been singing for forty minutes, how are you still enjoying this?''That curiosity continued to be cultivated by her father, whose quizzes on the meaning and lectures on the pronunciation of classical Arabic fostered a love for classic Arab music, and the verses that came before. Tracing this isnad of classical Arabic, from Pre-Islamic to Nizar Qabbani to Nagat Al Saghira's music, Hala found a new type of entertainment, one that felt rewarding as well-rooted. 'I would recite to my computer and film the poems,' Hala recalls. 'But I never thought I was reciting them correctly, nor that anyone would care.' Then, in August 2024, she posted a casual video - putting on rings, reciting a verse - and it went viral. The clip resonated with a diasporic audience estranged from the linguistic depth and nuance of their language. Go to the comments on any video and you'll find the same thing: 'I'm fluent in Arabic but not in this type of Arabic.' Through these videos, Hala taps into a collective gap in knowledge, offering her audience a piece of heritage that never seemed accessible. 'Poetry is such a deep, intricate form of language,' Hala explains. 'Especially Arabic. Arabic contains such a multitude of words and synonyms for so many things. For people who grew up in the West, they don't understand all the meanings, they didn't grow up around the metaphors and structures exhibited in classical poetry.' Her TikTok playlist, Fikra w Khatira, feels less like a short-form content series and more like a digital majlis. A modern-day salon where the esoteric complexity of Al-Mutanabbi is softened by bilingual subtitles, and the uvular crack of a qaf feels instinctual over the backdrop of a GRWM. In this unlikely setting, Hala has carved out an archive and a classroom where poetry is no longer distant or impenetrable. Asked whether she approves of the moniker 'The Poetry Girl', she laughs: 'What else do I want to get famous for? The Get Ready With Me Girl?! I like being 'The Poetry Girl',' Hala asserts. 'I have tried different ways of storytelling, but poetry touches my heart in a particular way, and it resonates with others too.' Hala's page isn't just a balm for the Arab diaspora; it stands as an advocate for poetic expression. A reminder that poetry, especially in Arabic, is an inimitable means of emotional translation, articulation, and healing. 'I speak three languages,' Hala says. 'None of them describe the process of emotions that a human goes through in the way Arabic does. There are twelve stages of love, twelve ways to describe love: from yearning to delight.' What Hala offers, ultimately, is connection. The same way her father once shared music and meaning on road trips, she now shares verse with strangers. And in her hands - and voice - Arabic poetry, once perceived as lofty and opaque, finds a new intimacy. Whether she is reciting Al-Mutanabbi from the driver's seat, or translating taboo poems by Qabbani in a GRWM, her content doesn't dilute the material, it democratises it.
CairoScene
06-06-2025
- Business
- CairoScene
Billboards Are the New Skyline – How Giant Ads Are Reshaping Cairo
At 9:14 AM, Cairo's Ring Road glows not with sunlight, but with 12 consecutive digital billboards advertising luxury compounds, soft drinks, and tuition fees that could rival Swiss universities. At one stretch, you're promised 'a home where harmony lives.' Two metres later: 'You Are Unique,' a validating sentiment that turns out to be an ad for a bank – a call to customise your mortgage, curate your credit score, and optimise your escape. It's the kind of affirmation that sells not just security, but a story: in a global economy where groceries feel aspirational, financial self-actualisation becomes the new moral high ground. (The joke's on us, of course. There is no exit plan that doesn't involve collective salvation. And as Donne warned, no man is an island – certainly not on the Ring Road.) In 2024, Egypt spent EGP 6.3 billion on out-of-home advertising, up 53% from the previous year. The country now supports one of the fastest-growing billboard markets in the Middle East. And the sector isn't done yet. According to AdMazad, Egypt's leading out-of-home (OOH) advertising performance measurement company, total impressions reached 154.2 billion last year, largely concentrated in Cairo's arterial roads and desert-ringed satellite cities. In some places, there is now more advertising space than visible sky. 'Billboards are a steady source of revenue,' Assem Memon, CEO of AdMazad, an Egyptian agency dedicated to tracking and analysing thousands of billboards across the country to measure their performance, tells CairoScene. 'Local authorities and municipalities rely on them to generate cashflow.' Egypt has turned its cities into a showroom, and its streets into a psychology experiment. But I'm here to make a case for – as well as against – the perpetual billboard. And that starts at the beginning. The idea for billboards began slowly in Egypt. First, as movie posters, as Nasserist propaganda promising Pan-Arabist heaven, cupping therapy offers, cure-all creams, and home exorcisms available – if you call now. Then as static signs hawking juice brands or local banks. Then came vinyl real estate giants along 6 October Bridge, animated LEDs near Nasr City, 3D billboards looming overhead. The number of OOH advertisers rose 23% year-on-year to 17,000, while the number of billboards increased 26.6% year-on-year to 40,000, according to Enterprise and AdMazad. It is clear that billboards in Egypt are more than visual noise, they're a critical financial artery for the country's urban fabric. Advertisers pay a concession fee just to rent the land, and when they build according to regulation, they also pay an annual licensing fee. 'As new roads open up, so do opportunities for billboard placements, Memon explains. 'But when it comes to premium visibility, 6th October and Tagamoa lead the pack. Today, renting a billboard in 6th October costs around 500,000 EGP per month, while the same space in Tagamoa can go for EGP 1 million.' But what's most striking, Memon notes, is Egypt's advertising imbalance. 'In other emerging markets like Pakistan, Morocco, or Malaysia, real estate usually ranks sixth or seventh in terms of billboard ad share.'In most countries, consumer goods, telecoms, banks, pharmacies, and cafés dominate OOH budgets. 'Here in Egypt,' Memon continues, 'real estate is number one—by far.' 'Real estate alone now accounts for 60% of OOH market share in Egypt, with advertising spend in the sector jumping 85% in a single year,' Engy Elmasry, Account Manager at Seven, tells CairoScene. These figures are based on AdMazad's audit of over 50,000 billboards across Egypt, reflecting the sector's dominance in the OOH advertising landscape. 'These aren't billboards,' Elmasry says. 'They're mood boards. We're selling escape, not space.' So why is Cairo's skyline a catalogue of gated compounds? 'It's partly economic,' Memon says. 'Currency devaluation has pushed real estate developers into a cycle of building fast, selling fast, and flipping fast. Most of them are small, fragmented players who want to build brand equity, so they flood the streets with ads to build credibility. Projects like 'Skies of Nation' or 'Jiran' want you to remember their name. The economic environment has changed real estate to an investment first product, and with the fragmentation among developers and entry of many first time developers, there is a need to create mass awareness.' This one-sector dominance has reshaped the OOH ecosystem. 'Product development in the ad industry now prioritises real estate,' Memon explains. 'It's all about targeting high-traffic highways like Mehwar and the Ring Road—not dense, lived-in neighbourhoods like Mohandiseen or Agouza.' The result? Billboards in older Cairo are vanishing, even though most Egyptians still live there. The consequences go beyond visibility. 'Imagine running a small shoe brand,' Memon says. 'You can't afford a single board in New Cairo or 6 October. The new outdoor inventory is primarily designed for real estate and mega advertisers. The unintended consequence of this is the limitation of advertising opportunities for smaller brands.' If billboard access were more equitable, Memon argues, it wouldn't just benefit small businesses—it would expand the industry as a whole. 'When different businesses at different maturity stages can access outdoor ads, you unlock new verticals. It's not about shrinking the real estate footprint—it's about sharing the skyline.' The challenge is ensuring that billboards don't morph into 'a visual zoo,' in Memon's words. His vision? 'Stronger regulation. One billboard every 500 metres. Limit the number of formats per zone. And for digital screens—especially at night—there needs to be serious scrutiny. They're beautiful, but they're also distracting.' In that sense, billboards don't just reflect Cairo. They define it. To understand Egypt's billboard boom is to understand the country's post-2011 psyche – fractured, aspirational, and fixated on visibility. The billboard has taken on a strange dual role, at once commercial and quasi-political. It is one of the loudest voices in the city. This is no accident. In 2020, Law 208 established a national authority to regulate billboard content, safety, and location. But its real function seems to be coordination, not restraint. Some areas, like the Ring Road and Sheikh Zayed, now show 94% and 91% billboard utilisation, respectively. In contrast, older districts like Maadi and Dokki are being bypassed – both literally and commercially. It's a visual map of power and capital. The old city is fading. The desert is the future. There is, however, a strong case for billboards – and it's not just aesthetic nihilism. Egypt's economy is in need of any growth sector that isn't tethered to global instability. 'Out-of-home advertising creates jobs, fuels creative industries, and, unlike many online ads, cannot be skipped or blocked,' Hana Amgad, Account Manager at Kijami, tells CairoScene. Studies show that 71% of drivers notice billboards, and nearly 50% of them engage with the content. For real estate developers, education providers, and telecom giants, billboards offer unmatched reach. More importantly, they offer permanence. In a digital world of disappearing stories and algorithmic noise, a giant, backlit promise by the highway still feels real. It occupies space. Over time, billboards have done more than advertise – they've embedded themselves into the semiotic structure of Cairo's urban life, anchoring the city's mental geography. Directions are given not by street names but by reference to giant LED screens: meet 'under the big Samsung,' turn 'at the Pepsi ad.' These aren't anomalies – they're a system. In a city marked by infrastructural fragmentation and visual overload, billboards offer a kind of consistency. Cairo orients itself through these billboards. They've become, in effect, part of the city's spatial memory – a hyper-commercial layer overlaid on top of a civic one. Yet for all their commercial appeal, Egypt's billboard culture has begun to swallow its cities. The deeper damage is psychological. These billboards offer not just commodities, but class identity. The images are consistent: manicured lawns, bilingual children. A villa in the desert with a golf course becomes not just a home, but a personality upgrade. The problem? Most people can't afford it. According to CAPMAS, the average Egyptian family in an urban centre spends 12.5% of their annual income on education alone. Meanwhile, kindergarten fees in many of the schools featured on roadside ads range between EGP 80,000 and EGP 160,000 a year. And that's before factoring in uniform fees, transport, and the subliminal cost of social conformity. The billboard is more than an ad. It is a border. It announces who belongs where. Architectural researcher Mohamad Abotera refers to this as a 'reproduction of space,' where the advertisers use visuals to redefine what Egypt looks like and who it is for. His study of real estate billboards in Cairo found that 79% featured elements of greenery, lakes, or imported nature. Many used European trees and landscapes foreign to Egyptian terrain. Some are even superimposed Los Angeles cityscapes. 'These are not metaphors. They are market segmentation strategies,' Elmasry tells CairoScene. It would be comical if it weren't so costly. To create these promised utopias in the desert, developers divert water from already stretched resources. In New Cairo, the per capita access to green space in gated communities is 216 sqm. In social housing nearby, it's 26 sqm. In older Cairo districts like Shubra, it's less than 0.1 sqm. The simulation is relentless. Despite all this, billboards endure – for good reason. Ultimately, they're the most democratic form of elite messaging. Memon is far from bearish on billboards. 'Traditional advertising isn't dead. It's evolving.' He points to a Nielsen study that found combining billboards with digital ads boosts message amplification by 60%. 'When London banned candy ads on public transport, sales of those products dropped 60%. That's how powerful outdoor media still is.' 'You don't need a phone, a data plan, or an algorithm to be reached. You just need to exist in public,' Amgad explains. And in that sense, the billboard becomes a curious sort of civic document. It shows you what the state, or at least the market, thinks Egypt should look like. And for all their distortions, billboards can also inspire. A clever campaign. A moment of colour on a grey commute. A family glimpsing a different future – even if it's unattainable. Egypt is in the midst of an identity shift. The post-revolution euphoria has long faded, replaced by infrastructural overhauls, capital migration to the desert, and a public increasingly anxious about where it belongs. In this context, billboards are not the disease. They are the symptom – and sometimes, the distraction. They represent both Egypt's most sincere ambitions and its deepest contradictions. They are monuments to optimism and inequality. And they are built to last. The question is not whether the billboards will change. It's whether Cairo will – or whether it will continue to be a city that cannot see itself, only the version sold back to it at 1080p, three storeys high, and payable in 100 monthly installments.
CairoScene
30-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CairoScene
MENA's Only Art Festival for Women, She Arts, Returns This October
'She Arts Festival directly challenges systemic imbalance in the cultural sector,' says founder Neveen Kenawy. May 30, 2025 In a region where women artists are too often pushed to the periphery, She Arts Festival is refusing to play by inherited rules. Returning from October 2nd to 5th, the festival is expanding its footprint across the New Administrative Capital, AUC Tahrir in Cairo, and Alexandria, bringing its message across Egypt. She Arts is still the only art festival of its kind in the MENA region, one dedicated entirely to spotlighting women in the arts. From contemporary dance and music to visual arts and panel discussions, the festival unapologetically centres women's voices, stories and creative legacies. 'By consistently creating space for women, the festival directly challenges systemic imbalance in the cultural sector,' Neveen Kenawy, Founder & Director of She Arts Festival, tells CairoScene. This year's edition will see a packed multidisciplinary programme featuring rising names and established figures from across the region. But sustaining a women-led initiative in an industry still dominated by mainstream, and often male, priorities remains a fight. 'Our biggest challenge has been securing consistent funding for a women-focused initiative in a space that often prioritises mainstream narratives,' Kenawy says. Now in its fourth year, She Arts has become a signal to the region that women aren't waiting for permission. They're making their own stages and filling them.
CairoScene
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CairoScene
Win Tickets to Heineken's UCL Final Party in Uptown Cairo on May 31st
Tell us about your pre-match rituals for a chance to win access to the Champions League final watch party May 29, 2025 We all have one. That oddly specific, slightly questionable ritual we swear brings our team good luck. Maybe it's wearing the same socks since '09, refusing to sit down until halftime, or reciting the Champions League anthem like it's your national anthem. Whatever it is, now it might just win you and your football buddy a night out you won't forget. To celebrate the Champions League Final, Heineken is throwing an epic screening party at Uptown Cairo on May 31st which is set to be so much more than just 90 minutes of football. Think a full day out: football-themed carnival games, a locker room with awesome prizes, a goalkeeping reflex challenge, food by Grill Setup, temporary tattoos, and even a pop-up barbershop for that fresh fade before kickoff. Oh, and of course, the match on the big screen, cold Heinekens in hand. Want in? CairoScene is giving away free tickets to a few lucky fans. How to enter. On the below post 1. Comment your pre-match ritual. Tag the friend you always watch the matches with. That's it. Five winners with two tickets each will be selected at random and announced by Friday, May 30th at 6PM.
