On the evening of July 7, 2025, a fire erupted on the upper floors of the Ramses Central Exchange building in downtown Cairo, setting off a chain of events that would paralyse large segments of Egypt’s digital infrastructure. The damage included charred hardware and collapsed data centres, and it extended to a nation’s increasing reliance on digitised services, including essential e-government platforms.
As the smoke cleared, it became evident that the fire had done more than destroy equipment; it had exposed the fragility of centralised digital systems and the urgent need to rethink how governments deliver digital services during a crisis.
When E-Government Services Vanish
Across the MENA region and beyond, governments are rapidly embracing digital transformation. From tax filings and business licenses to judicial proceedings and social benefits, e-government platforms are now the backbone of public service delivery. Yet few of these systems are built with resilience-by-design.
When the Ramses Exchange failed, it didn’t just knock out the internet; it disrupted core state functions.
Connectivity plummeted below 30% nationally. Critical services like online payments, national portals, mobile applications, and citizen communication channels either slowed to a crawl or ceased entirely. Emergency hotlines, airport systems, and ATM networks faltered.
In short, the state’s digital nervous system shut down.
The Pitfalls of Centralisation
The fire laid bare a troubling architectural weakness: over-centralisation.
Egypt’s internet infrastructure, like that of many developing nations, relies heavily on a single physical hub for routing domestic and international traffic. Many public-facing digital services, even those managed by separate ministries, are hosted in facilities that depend on this node.
This incident illustrated what resilience experts have long warned: a single point of failure can bring down entire ecosystems. And in the context of government, that means disrupting essential rights and services —from birth registration to social security— exactly when citizens need them most.
Learning from Global Leaders
Contrast this with countries that have institutionalised resilience in their digital public infrastructure.
- Estonia, often cited as a model for digital governance, runs its services through a distributed architecture called X-Road, backed by encrypted backups and an international “data embassy” in Luxembourg to ensure continuity even under physical attack.
- India’s e-gov systems are replicated across state-level data centres, allowing traffic to reroute automatically if a hub fails.
- Rwanda uses edge computing and local digital centres that can operate independently of the national internet.
What these countries share is not just technical sophistication, but a governance mindset that treats resilience as a fundamental design principle, not an afterthought.
What We Should Do
To avoid repeating the vulnerabilities exposed by the Ramses fire, digital development practitioners, technologists, and governments —particularly those accelerating digital transformation— must adopt a multi-layered strategy for continuity and resilience:
- Decentralised Hosting & IXPs: Avoid dependency on single data centres or internet exchange points by investing in geographically distributed infrastructure.
- Mandate Redundancy in E-Gov Projects: Every national portal or public service app must have backup systems, cloud replication, and clear failover protocols.
- Simulate Crises: Conduct regular stress tests and simulated outages to evaluate readiness and coordination between digital, security, and civil defence actors.
- Cross-Sector Contingency Planning: Treat e-government as critical infrastructure—alongside energy and water—and embed its continuity into national emergency planning.
- Engage the Private Sector: ISPs and telecom companies should be legally obligated to ensure emergency traffic rerouting for essential services, with defined service-level guarantees.
A Fire as a Turning Point
The Ramses fire is an IT disaster and a governance alarm bell.
It revealed how fragile digital transformation can be when efficiency is prioritised over durability. As more of our public life moves online, the burden on governments is not only to digitise, but to do so safely, sustainably, and securely. Citizens must never lose access to state services simply because a cable burned or a building collapsed.
Crisis reveals the strength of our institutions, or the cracks in their foundations. The question is now: how can e-government services survive a disaster? Now is the time to ensure they can. Before its too late.
By Amged B. Shwehdy a digital transformation specialist at the intersection of research, digital policy, and innovation.
