Power and Internet in Egypt: Risks for Remote Teams

If you are considering a team in Egypt, someone in your company will eventually ask about power cuts and internet. They should. Egypt had scheduled power cuts for most of a year in 2023 and 2024, the subject came back into the news in October 2026, and most articles on outsourcing to Egypt skip it entirely.

Here is the short answer. Fixed internet in Egypt is good enough for remote work and among the fastest in Africa. Power supply is the real risk, and it depends on Egypt's energy import costs. Teams that are set up properly keep working through cuts. Teams that are not lose hours. This guide covers what has actually happened, what the risk looks like now, and the setup that handles it.

What happened with power cuts in 2023 and 2024?

From July 2023, Egypt ran a national load shedding programme: scheduled daily power cuts by area, driven by the cost and availability of fuel for power stations. Freedom House reported that these outages limited access to fixed-line internet and also disrupted mobile connectivity, because cell towers were affected too (Freedom House).

The government halted the cuts from 21 July 2024 after securing fuel shipments (Ahram Online). In September 2024 the prime minister announced the end of the programme that had started in July 2023 (Egypt Today).

What is the risk now?

For summer 2026, the government said there would be no scheduled cuts (Egypt Independent). Then, in October 2026, the prime minister described a scenario in which high oil prices could leave supplies covering only part of domestic demand, with daily cuts of six to eight hours. The cabinet's information centre clarified that he was describing a hypothetical scenario, not announcing a decision (Egypt Today).

Our honest reading: scheduled cuts are not happening today, and the government clearly wants to avoid them. But the 2023 to 2024 experience shows they can return when energy import costs spike. Plan for that possibility rather than assume it away. A team that is resilient to a two-hour daily cut will also handle the occasional unscheduled outage, which can happen anywhere.

How good is internet in Egypt?

Fixed broadband has improved sharply in recent years. Ookla data put Egypt's median fixed download speed at about 76 Mbps in September 2024, 70th in the world (CairoScene). EnterpriseAM sums up the position well: Egypt leads Africa on fixed speed but trails the Gulf (EnterpriseAM). That is comfortably enough for video calls, screen sharing, development work and cloud applications.

Mobile data is weaker. Freedom House noted that Egypt ranked 107th globally for mobile speed in mid-2024 (Freedom House). In practice that makes a 4G connection a sensible backup line, not a primary one.

On deliberate shutdowns: Egypt cut internet access nationwide during the 2011 protests (Computerworld), and any buyer doing due diligence will find that. It was fifteen years ago. In April 2026 the cabinet publicly denied rumours of planned night-time internet cuts linked to power rationing (Egypt Today). Treat it as a political risk to note, not a day-to-day operational one.

What about the subsea cables?

Egypt sits on the shortest, mostly undersea route between Europe and Asia, so many subsea cables cross it. That brings capacity, and it brings exposure. In February 2024 three cables in the Red Sea were cut, and network measurement firms observed the impact on traffic between Europe, Asia and the Middle East (Kentik). Earlier, in June 2022, a cut on one of these cables where it crosses Egypt affected users across several countries (Cloudflare).

For a team in Cairo working with Europe, the practical effect of events like this is usually rerouting and higher latency on some paths rather than loss of service. It is worth knowing about, but it is not a reason on its own to avoid Egypt. The same routes carry traffic for the Gulf and East Africa, so the exposure is regional, not specific to Cairo.

The setup that keeps a team working

Resilience comes in layers. None of them is expensive, and together they turn a power cut from a lost day into a minor interruption.

Layer	At an office	At home
Power	Building generator or a dedicated backup supply	A UPS for the router and laptop, sized for at least two hours
Internet	Two fixed lines from different providers	Fixed line plus a 4G or 5G backup on a different network
Work	Cloud tools, nothing critical stored locally	The same
Process	Written handovers, shared task boards	The same, plus an agreed rule for who covers during an outage

Three practical points matter more than the hardware:

1. Decide where the team works. For roles that need guaranteed real-time availability, such as live customer support, an office with generator backup is the reliable choice. For engineering, finance and other work that tolerates a short gap, a well-equipped home setup is usually enough.
2. Write it into the agreement. Ask your partner what backup power and connectivity each person has, and who pays for it. "We have backup" is not an answer. A list is.
3. Work in a way that survives an hour offline. Teams that write things down, keep tasks in shared boards and hand over in writing barely notice a short outage. Teams that depend on someone being on a call at every moment notice every one.

Our customer support teams page explains how live-support roles are set up differently from teams with more flexible hours. Our dedicated engineering teams page covers how engineering teams usually work.

What to ask any partner in Egypt

• What backup power does each person on our team have, at the office and at home?
• Does each person have a second internet connection on a different network?
• What happened to your teams during the 2023 to 2024 load shedding, and what did you change?
• If cuts return, what is the plan for our team specifically, and who pays for any extra equipment?
• Is any of our data stored on local machines, or only in our systems?

A partner who ran teams through 2023 and 2024 should answer the third question in detail. If the answer is vague, that tells you something.

How to test it before you commit

You do not have to take any of this on trust. Three simple checks tell you more than any assurance:

• Ask for the team's setup in writing: for each person, their power backup and second connection, before the contract is signed.
• Run a pilot month with one or two people. Keep a simple log of any minutes lost to power or connectivity. A month of real data settles the question better than any article, this one included.
• Test a failover once. Ask a team member to unplug their main line during a call and switch to the backup. If it takes more than a minute or two, the setup needs work.

Where this is a real reason to choose somewhere else

If your service depends on near-perfect real-time availability from people working at home, with no tolerance for even short gaps, Egypt needs an office-based setup with full backup, or it may not be the right fit. Eastern Europe has its own trade-offs, which we compare honestly in Egypt versus Eastern Europe. For most knowledge work, the right setup makes power and connectivity a managed risk rather than a deciding one.

The short version

Fixed internet in Egypt is good and getting better. Power is the real risk: scheduled cuts ran from 2023 to 2024, they are not happening now, and they could return if energy costs spike. Build in backup power, a second connection and written working habits, put them in the agreement, and ask your partner what they learned last time. Our why Egypt page sets out the wider case, including where Egypt does not fit, and our guide to hiring in Egypt without a local entity covers what the agreement itself should include. If you want to talk through the setup for your roles, contact us.