Le canal de Suez : la voie d'eau égyptienne au cœur du commerce mondial

On the map it is a thin blue line through the desert, roughly 193 kilometres long. In the world economy it is one of the most important shortcuts ever dug: the Suez Canal links the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, sparing ships the long voyage around Africa, and carries a share of global seaborne trade commonly estimated at around a tenth or more. For Egypt it is at once a strategic asset, a leading source of hard currency and a symbol of national sovereignty.

The canal opened in 1869 after some ten years of excavation led by the Frenchman Ferdinand de Lesseps, with the heaviest burden borne by tens of thousands of Egyptian labourers working in harsh conditions. Its inauguration was one of the grandest international occasions of the nineteenth century, and from that day the maps of world navigation changed forever.

Unlike the Panama Canal, Suez is a sea-level passage with no locks, which simplifies transit. Ships move through in precisely timed convoys, and the full journey between the two entrances takes between roughly ten and a dozen or more hours depending on direction and traffic.

In July 1956, President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal Company. The decision sparked the Tripartite Aggression — the Suez Crisis — and became one of the defining moments of modern Egyptian history. Ever since, Egyptians have regarded the canal as wholly national property, run by the Egyptian Suez Canal Authority.

The canal was closed to navigation for eight full years, from 1967 to 1975, following the wars with Israel. Ships trapped in its lakes lay at anchor for so long that they became known as the Yellow Fleet, coated by desert sand, before the waterway reopened in 1975 and traffic gradually returned.

In 2015 a major expansion known as the New Suez Canal was inaugurated: a parallel channel of about thirty-five kilometres, alongside the deepening of other sections, allowing two-way passage along parts of the route and cutting waiting and transit times. The project was financed domestically through investment certificates that ordinary citizens bought in large numbers.

In normal times dozens of ships transit each day — approaching or exceeding twenty thousand vessels in busy years — and tolls bring in billions of dollars annually, with revenues in the best years nearing or passing the nine-billion-dollar mark. Together with tourism and remittances from Egyptians abroad, the canal sits at the top of the country's foreign currency earners.

In March 2021 the grounding of the giant container ship Ever Given reminded the entire world of the passage's importance. The vessel blocked the channel for six days, hundreds of ships queued at both entrances, analysts put the value of held-up trade in the billions of dollars per day, and screens around the globe followed the refloating operation hour by hour.

Nor is the canal's position immune to geopolitics. The alternative route around the Cape of Good Hope adds a week or more to voyages and burns costly extra fuel, yet periods of insecurity in the Red Sea have pushed major shipping lines to detour around Africa temporarily, cutting transits and revenues — a reminder that canal income mirrors the condition of the region and the world.

Egypt today aspires to be more than a tollgate. The Suez Canal Economic Zone gathers ports and industrial and logistics areas at Ain Sokhna, East Port Said and elsewhere, part of an ambition to turn both banks of the canal into a global hub for manufacturing, maritime services, bunkering and transhipment, not merely a passage ships pay to cross.

In the Egyptian imagination the canal remains far more than an economic project. It lives in school curricula, in the memory of nationalisation and in the songs of the national era — a daily witness to Egypt's singular position where the continents of the old world meet, and where part of the world economy's bloodstream passes each morning through sovereign Egyptian water.