North Africa Construction: Egypt

Egypt closed fiscal 2015/2016 with GDP growth of between 3.6% and 4.0% in real terms.

In the 30 months between April 2014 and October 2016, the Egyptian government made real estate investments valued at 43 billion Egyptian pounds (2.5 billion euros), compared to the 30 billion pounds invested in the last 20 years.

This enormous increase in funding was championed by Mostafa Madbouly (Minister of Housing), who pointed out that the investment was allocated partly to social housing projects for low-income citizens and partly to the Dar Misr project launched in 2014 for the construction of middle class housing. For the construction of social housing the first two implementation phases involve the construction of 600,000 affordable houses (256,000 already delivered in 2016 and 275,000 due for completion by mid-2017). When completed, the Dar Misr project will involve the construction of 250,000 apartments for a total investment of 70 billion EGP (more than 4 billion euros).

Last October, the Minister of Housing announced the construction of 9 new cities including the new Administrative Capital due to be built to the east of Cairo. The city will occupy an area of 700 square kilometres in the desert and will accommodate the new government administrative district, housing for five million people, 1,000 mosques, industrial areas, a 5,000-seat conference centre and the world’s largest park.

The other mega-cities under construction are New Toshka (south-east of Aswan), East Port Said, New Alamein and Galala Plateau, while New Ismailia City was opened in 2016 on a 10 million sq.m site.

The first two phases in the Long Live Egypt low-cost housing project in Asmarat, in the Muqqattam neighbourhood of Cairo, were also completed in 2016. These consist of a total of 10,980 houses covering a surface area of approximately 150,000 sq.m.

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