2023
Train Accidents Unstoppable in Egypt
Entry type: Single project
Country/area: Egypt
Publishing organisation: Arij only
https://arij.net/investigations/train-accidents/
https://arij.net/investigations/train-accidents-en/
Organisation size: Big
Publication date: 2022-04-26
Language: Arabic, English
Authors: # **Reem Allam and Asmaa Kandil (Hamdeya Elsayed) is a pseudonym
# **
Biography:
# **Reem Allam
# Curent post: chief-editor of ”Allaama” website it is a journalist website specializing in economy, science and health journalism
# – vice president of banking and financing department at “AL ALAM ALYOUM ” newspaper the first arabic economic journal in the Middle East.
**# Asmaa Kandil
# – Working as a freelance editor at the International Journalist Network website
# – Assistant Professor at the “Visual Communication Department”, Faculty of Mass Communication, Ahram Canadian University.
# PhD Degree in the faculty of Mass Communication, Cairo University, 2020, First Honor with the Recommendation to Exchange with other Universities.
# **
Project description:
https://arij.net/investigations/train-accidents-en/
https://arij.net/investigations/train-accidents/
**Train accident investigation
“Reem Allam” and “Asmaa Kandil” produced a data-driven story, so called: (Train Accidents Unstoppable in Egypt`), the investigation was published on “ARIJ” network in April 2022,
We have worked on the investigation about a year and a half.
The investigation hypothesis was based on external loans and grants from international and regional development institutions, which were obtained by successive Egyptian governments over the past 15 years, represented by the Ministries of Transport and International Cooperation and the Railways Authority. In order to develop the railway system, stop the bleeding of train accidents.
Impact reached:
# Raise Awareness about the Train Accidents that Happened in Egypt in the last 15 years.
# Shed the light of the most important loans and grants obtained by Egypt.
**Shed the light of the train accidents in Lower and Upper Egypt, and the most famous train accidents in Egypt’s history**
Techniques/technologies used:
****Studio Flourish
Google sheet
Excel
Tabula
Graphics
Context about the project:
# **we searched and scrapped the web about the following information:
# -How have the successive governments dealt with train accidents since 2000?
# -Why didn’t the railway system develop although we get external loans and grants from international and regional institutions?
# -What are the financial and human losses due to the continuation and recurrence of train accidents?
# – We Are confronting officials about the results we have reached:
# We searched for loans obtained by the Egyptian government over the past 15 years (from August 2006- December 2020).
# – We Prepared an excel sheet in order to document all the information we have obtained from the “Egyptian National Railways” website, the “Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics,” the “news websites archive,” and “important information about train accidents we obtained from the Al-Ahram newspaper archive.” ,to determine basic information about the Egyptian railways, train accidents in Lower and Upper Egypt, and the most famous train accidents in Egypt’s history, and to extract important information from the budget of the Egyptian National Railways.
# -We Designed various graphics on “Flourish” website and included them in our investigative.
# -We divided the tasks between us and reviewed the data and numbers.
# -The investigation included documented information on the most important loans and grants obtained by Egypt, and graphics and charts about the causes of train accidents, the decrease in the number of railway passengers, and the heads of the Railway Authority and Ministers of Transport who submitted their resignations from their positions after train accidents occurred.
# **
What can other journalists learn from this project?
# **It’s a deep investigative reporting based on how to use the open data sources to make a data-driven story full of facts, statistics, numbers, and documented papers.**
Project links:
https://arij.net/investigations/train-accidents/
https://arij.net/investigations/train-accidents-en/
