Egypt has been struggling economically for some time and has had food riots at a couple of points. Since the "Arab Spring" and throwing out Mubarak, their tourism industry (one of their primary sources of income) has dried up. Now the government (which heavily subsidizes food) is saying that people who already feel that they don't have enough will have to cut back on what they eat.
As the author of this article notes:
This doesn't seem too far off from what has been going on in North Korea, though it is much more recent and on a much larger scale.
As the author of this article notes:
We are watching something unique and terrible in modern history, namely the disintegration of a society of 80 million people, with the prospect of real hunger–a self-made famine brought about by social and political disaster rather than crop failure or war.
This doesn't seem too far off from what has been going on in North Korea, though it is much more recent and on a much larger scale.