Agadir is not like other places. Utterly destroyed in an earthquake in the 60s, it has been rebuilt in the international style, a mix of softish brutalism that wouldn't seem out of place in Coventry were the sun to ever shine, and the clean bold lines of modernism that Morocco does so well.

The beach is a tourist hotspot across the Islamic world, attested to by the long line of Lebanese, Gulf & Turkish restaurants that line it, and the ginger Pashtuns who fill the Pakistani cafe. There's a posh marina with a Zara and policemen who run face control on anyone deigning to come close. Agadir is not like other places, but it is like every place.

The first thing that struck me when I arrived in Egypt proper (as opposed to the Sinai), was just how lush and verdant it was.  Throughout history Egypt has been the breadbasket of empires, and driving through the fertile delta region where blocks of flats squeeze together to leave as much field space as possible it's easy to believe.  With this and the entire Nile Valley under cultivation since the Aswan Dam came into being, the contrast with much of the rest of the Middle East & North Africa couldn't be more marked.

Perhaps that's why there's been such interest in a couple of sentences thrown into a report on malnutrition by The Economist:

Egypt’s agricultural value-added per person rose more than 20% in 1990-2007. Yet both malnutrition and obesity rose—an extremely unusual combination.

Some bloggers have been swift to see the not quite so invisible hand of capitalism slapping away.  Certainly meat has been in increasing demand from the new Egyptian middle classes, with all the inefficiency of food use that implies.  Egypt has also been switching increasingly from growing wheat to growing cash crops, and the traditional fellah tending his little patch of land has been displaced by increasing levels of agribusiness.