Daylight saving time will return to Egypt as of tomorrow, Friday, 28 April. At midnight on Friday, the time will be changed to 1am, announced Nader Saad, Spokesman for the Egyptian Cabinet, on Wednesday, 26 April.
The change means that clocks will be set forward by one hour. Egypt’s time is currently GMT+2. For the duration of the daylight saving time period – which will last from the last Friday of April to the last Thursday of October (26 October) – Egypt’s time will fall within the GMT+3 time zone.
Daylight saving time has the effect of adding one hour of sunlight to the evening. Currently, the sun sets in Cairo at 6:30pm. As of tomorrow, the sunset will be at 7:30pm. This means that people in the country will experience one extra hour of daylight each day, allowing them to reduce their electricity usage by turning on electrical lights in their homes an hour later.
Smartphones and electronic devices connected to the internet should normally update their clocks automatically to reflect the adjustment, but wrist watches, bedside alarm clocks, and other non-smart devices will have to be manually adjusted by adding an hour. For instance, if a wrist watch is set to 5pm, its user should manually adjust the time to 6pm.
Daylight saving time has been used and abandoned in Egypt at varying turns since its first application in 1957. The practice was most recently implemented in 2014, but was suspended the following year and ultimately abandoned in July 2016 after the country’s parliament voted against its use.
The move to reintroduce the practice was first announced by the Egyptian cabinet on 1 March, as part of the country’s efforts to reduce its energy consumption in light of ongoing economic challenges.
Egypt is currently experiencing a foreign currency shortage, aggravated by the Ukraine conflict. Natural gas exports are a key source of foreign currency in Egypt. As of August 2022, 60 percent of natural gas production in the country was being used in electricity generation.
As such, the decision to reintroduce daylight saving time is the latest in a series of measures implemented since 2022 to reduce government and commercial energy use so that the country can export more natural gas.
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