MOTORISTS stuck in the traffic on Cairo’s Salah Salam highway need only look up for a clue to one cause of their misery. Looming above the road, a red digital ticker on the wall of the statistics agency displays Egypt’s population in real time: over 88m people, and counting. During one ten-minute jam in April the number went up by 21, tweets an aghast driver.
This article appeared in the Middle East & Africa section of the print edition under the headline "The too fertile crescent"
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