British architecture firm Weston Williamson + Partners recently announced their design won a commission to build Egypt’s “Science City” near 6 of October City. Set to be run by Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the futuristic complex of buildings and canopies is set to span 1.3 mn square feet and who knows what it’s supposed to cost.

The Dubai-esque initiative to bring about a scientific revolution in Egypt by building a subject matter “city” may gloss over more fundamental, non-building related challenges to doing research in Egypt, as outlined by Aya Nader for Al Monitor on Tuesday in ‘Research: No man’s land in Egypt.’ The piece cites researchers who lament “the security mentality governs every aspect” of their work. The article highlights the government’s longstanding controls on what is permitted for research, from considering foreign funding “espionage” to deliberately hindering the process of getting a permit to access official documents. There is also the issue of the declining state of the Egyptian educational system, which has failed to engrave academic integrity and freedom into the minds of students, resulting in thousands of plagiarized theses and mere translations in place of original output.