--- title: "Egypt's New Administrative Capital: Inside the $60 Billion Desert Megaproject" description: "Egypt is a country with a very grand history.\n\nThe year of the founding of Egypt is seen as 3150 BC, through the unification of the prehistoric kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt under Pharaoh Narmer. That makes Egypt a total of 5174 years old.\n\nNow granted, the profile of the state has changed much in that time, later becoming a part of Arab civilization and eventually an Arab Republic, adopting Islam, being colonised several times and gaining and losing various different parcels of territory. Nevertheless, Egypt remains one of the oldest continuous civilisations in existence, something not lost in its great monuments, some of which rank among the oldest man-made structures and — understandably — some of the most-visited sites in the world.\n\nSome of these sites lie directly next to the Egyptian capital of Cairo, itself an ancient city with its own storied history and beauty. As mentioned by World Population Review, the city of Cairo is so old that when Alexander the Great visited Cairo's precursor Memphis, the city was already older to him than he is to us in 2024.\n\nYet, while it will remain all of these things — as well as home to many of Egypt's jewels — for many generations to come, it will, within the next decade, no longer be the capital of the modern state of Egypt. That title will soon pass to the as-yet-unnamed city around 45 kilometres to Cairo's east, which will inherit its capital city status, as well as around six million inhabitants.\n\nSo today we take a look at this extraordinary megaproject, and attempt to piece together why it is being constructed, what shall its features be, and why the decision has been made to move the capital of this storied country to it, rendering the city of Cairo to a sprawling but somewhat less significant city than it has been for millennia.\n\n## Cairo — Buckling Beneath its Inhabitants\n\nFirst, a little bit about the issues facing Egypt's current capital.\n\nCairo is Egypt's largest city and one of the largest in the world. Brimming with history and culture, it is also brimming with about 23 million residents in its metropolitan area, up from 2.5 million in 1950. As a matter of fact, there are now more people living in Cairo than were living in all of Egypt in 1950.\n\nIn general, Egypt's population is booming. Already at 105 million people, which makes it the 13th-largest country in the world, it continues to grow at a rate of around 1.6% per year according to Reuters. Not only this, but the population of Egypt is densely concentrated along the Nile Delta, and in its principal cities — above all Cairo. In fact, if the area of Egypt was counted only as the Nile delta, coast and the Nile valley, it would be one of most densely-populated countries in the world, ranking only behind the city-states of Monaco and Singapore.\n\nAnd Cairo's neighbourhoods are growing at an electrifying pace. According to the UN, the city's population grew by almost half a million people in the last year alone. This makes it one of the fastest-growing cities in the world and — at 50,000 people per square mile — also one of its most concentrated. With such a vast population, the city is struggling to cope with a range of problems. It is highly polluted, suffers from housing shortages and severe poverty, as well as circulation problems and road traffic backups. All this is hardly surprising for a city of its gargantuan size. Even Egypt's second city — Alexandria — is struggling to contain overcrowding and circulation issues, despite being only 30% the size of Cairo. And Cairo's growth is not projected to slow down any time soon. In fact, by 2050, it is expected to surpass 38 million inhabitants, more than the current biggest city in the world in Tokyo, and second only to Mumbai, if its own population projections prove accurate.\n\nAdministratively, Cairo's massive traffic jams are causing a huge problem for the state, with too many of the most important administrative buildings being located in Cairo's downtown. The city centre — as in every major city — is the most congested part of Cairo, where traffic brings the city to a complete standstill on a regular basis. And when security lockdowns — necessary for certain state visits and summits — are added to this, it can lead to complete transit chaos in the middle of the city.\n\nMoreover, the massive use of cars and the resulting air pollution come at a cost to residents' health. According to the Clean Air Fund, air pollution is directly responsible for around 18,000 premature deaths per year, and around 2% of all deaths in Cairo are considered in some way attributable to its poor air quality. Cairo's population suffers from myriad health issues, including high rates of poverty-related malnutrition and microbiological diseases such as hepatitis and typhoid fever. The healthcare expenses resulting from the poor conditions also come at a major cost to the state, a problem Egypt shares with other countries of the MENA region, where — according to the World Bank, around 2% of GDP is lost to the economic consequences of air pollution each year.\n\nThe problem of pollution caused by vehicle use is also something that the government has limited means to curtail, since reducing fuel subsidies for cars would mean disadvantaging the low-income families dependent on them, many of whom live in Cairo's poorer periphery and who are dependent on their vehicles for everyday mobility.\n\nSo when the decision was announced by Egypt's housing minister in 2015 to build a high-tech new capital city, one with the capacity to hold more than six million residents, it was hoped that this would alleviate the significant burden of both Cairo's vast overpopulation and its administrative challenges, as well as offering a landmark new city full of new and impressive sites to the eye.\n\nHowever, the project has run into a series of potentially lethal problems, which have threatened to torpedo Egypt's economy with it.\n\n## Development of the New City\n\nFirst, it should be noted that the decision to fashion a new city strictly for the purpose of functioning as the administrative capital of that country is not something without precedent.\n\nBrazil, for example, changed its capital city into the planned city of Brasília, which itself was built in the 1950s. This was done to offer a more central alternative to Brazil's erstwhile capital, the coastal city of Rio de Janeiro. Other countries like Australia and Canada have designated their capital city as one significantly less populous than their most major city, no doubt in order to enact a separation between the arms of the state and the problems coming with built-up urban areas.\n\nAnd these cities pale in comparison to the size and structural problems faced by the city of Cairo, accumulated throughout not only its vast history but also through the rapid recent rises in the number of inhabitants.\n\nIt should also be noted that fashioning new cities out of nowhere is something not unusual in the Middle East and Arabian Gulf, with parts of Dubai and the King Abdullah Economic City in Saudi Arabia as recent examples.\n\nAs a matter of fact, the new capital is not even the first such planned city constructed by Egypt. Take the 6th of October City, a satellite city of some 400,000 residents 30 kilometres west of Cairo, which was founded in 1979 to alleviate some of the administrative and corporate burden from the capital. Or perhaps New Cairo City, located to Cairo's East and adjacent to the New Administrative Capital, similarly founded at the turn of the century to provide alternatives to the pent-up capital city.\n\nIn fact, all these projects remain concurrently under construction, as Egypt's government races to find solutions to its expanding population and to provide housing and offices helping to decentralise Egypt's various Cairo-based headquarters and institutions.\n\nSuch projects are also taking shape in other parts of Egypt. In 2018, President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi announced plans for the development of New Alamein City, a seaside resort located west of the second city of Alexandria, on the Mediterranean coast. Construction of the Alamein resort is primarily intended to draw tourism, but also to draw some of Alexandria's residents away from the city and to ease the congestion present there.\n\nNevertheless, the New Administrative Capital ranks somewhat apart — both in its significance, and in its scale.\n\n## The New Administrative Capital\n\nPlans for the new city were announced at the Egypt Economic Development Conference on 13 March 2015.\n\nThe project, largely overseen by Egypt's Ministry of Defense, was intended to consolidate and move government buildings into a tightly controlled arena, extensively monitored by thousands of surveillance cameras.\n\nPer the announced plans, the new city was set to include a brand-new government administrative district, a diplomatic quarter, a cultural district, 21 residential districts, a huge central park, a new airport, and a newly-built monorail system linking it with Cairo. It would rehouse around thirty government ministries (with a workforce of some 55,000 people), as well as foreign embassies, the country's parliament, the residence of the President, and of course the aforementioned 6.5 million residents.\n\nThe new city is already home to the tallest building in Africa, the 77-floor tall Iconic Tower, as well as a huge presidential palace, multiple ministry buildings, schools, hospitals, and much more. The site is intended to be both modern and green, with the government having announced that it will allocate 15 square metres of green space per inhabitant in the new development. The new capital will have a central \"green river\", a combination of open water and planted greenery twice the size of New York's Central Park. All this in order to curb Egypt's massive problem with pollution and make the country generally \"greener\".\n\nAnd so, like a great pharaonic project of the 21st century, the city is growing out of the desert, complete with gigantic governmental buildings and other trappings.\n\nAnd it is easy to imagine that the New Administrative Capital, when complete, would not only be a necessity in order to reduce the overcrowding of Cairo, but also a sensible solution to the administrative problems faced by ministries in the capital.\n\nBut with final completion not yet attained, the Egyptian government has gone deeply into debt, and some Cairo residents have declared that they cannot afford to live in the new city. For now, the city remains mostly bereft of human habitation, with an estimate of only around 1,000 families living in the city at the time of writing.\n\nThe new city does not yet have a name, and continues to be referred to simply as the New Administrative Capital (NAC), with debate continuing on what to actually call it. And while construction of the new site has continued with aplomb since the project's inception, the project has faced mounting criticism due to its various backlogs, having by now bypassed both its intended completion date of 2022 and its original budget of 45 billion US dollars by some margin. As of 2024, the money piled into the project is estimated to be close to 60 billion USD, with construction expected to be complete later this year.\n\nAnd with all this accumulated cost and delay, the New Administrative Capital has resulted in a wide-ranging series of problems which have tarnished the project's fanfare, and which are seen as potentially lethal to Egypt's relatively fragile economy.\n\n## The New Capital — an Exercise in Self-Ruin?\n\nAmong the many areas of mounting criticism faced by the project are its massive cost, its relative impracticality for lower-income families, as well as the over-the-top elements which have been added to it.\n\nYou see, unlike Saudi Arabia and Dubai, wherein such projects are financed by way of both countries' accrued oil wealth, Egypt is not a mega-rich state and the vast cost of the project has raised major concern.\n\nIn the time since President El-Sisi came to power, Egypt has been struck by low economic growth, rising inflation, and a severe currency devaluation — with the Egyptian Pound having devalued by a startling 90% since 2014. The economy has especially floundered in the most recent few years, being hampered by world events such as the War in Ukraine (which greatly impacted Egypt's trading arrangements with both Russia and Ukraine) as well as both the Covid-19 pandemic and the War in Gaza, both of which curtailed Egypt's vital tourism industry.\n\nIn light of this, some of the plush aspects of the city have come in for especially acute criticism.\n\nTake for example its grand mosque, the Masjid Misr Al Kabeer, which has come in for some particularly scathing commentary on social media. The mosque and accompanying community centre cover more than 19,000 square metres and cost 800 million Egyptian pounds (or around 20.7 million British pounds) to build. It is the biggest mosque in Africa and one of the largest Islamic centres in the world, and the inside is no less grandiose than its vast exterior.\n\nAmong its features, the mosque includes the highest pulpit in the world, standing at almost 17 metres tall, as well as a colossal chandelier in its main hall, the heaviest in the world at over 24,000 kilograms.\n\nWhen the details of the mosque's lavish interior were revealed, it led to heated discussions in Egypt. It didn't help that at the time when the project was unveiled in March 2023, Egypt was suffering from its highest level of inflation in years, at around 30% in that month alone.\n\nAnother source of great outrage lies in the rather lavish spending on the relocated Ministries to the city. And no Ministry stands to gain as much from the relocation as the Ministry of Defence, whose involvement in the whole project is in itself a source of great controversy.\n\nThe MOD's new headquarters, known as the Octagon, will be a simply monumental structure of over 22,000 acres, becoming at once the biggest military headquarters in the world, and also the biggest administrative building of any kind in the world. Its cost has been closely guarded by the government, but is estimated to be in the region of around 400 million US dollars.\n\nNow, building a Defence Ministry headquarters of this scale would be perhaps understandable for a military megapower: one with an overwhelmingly vast military or with a boundless military budget. But Egypt is neither of those things. At 440,000 active personnel, Egypt's military is large but still smaller than both Vietnam and South Korea's armed forces, both of them significantly smaller than Egypt in population size. But it is in Egypt's defence budget where the lopsided cost and scale of the new Ministry is more keenly felt. At around 9.4 billion dollars, Egypt's defence budget is the 35th biggest in the world, smaller than that of Qatar, Kuwait, and the UAE, and roughly similar in size to Switzerland and Norway, neither one of which has an active personnel of more than 30,000 soldiers.\n\nBut for many, besides the massive economic cost, it is the some of the other suspected reasons underpinning the Defence Ministry's involvement which are causing lingering cynicism.\n\nYou see, in the 2010s, Egypt went through two successful popular revolutions, one which brought down the country's longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak and culminated with the democratic election of Islamist candidate Mohamed Morsi, and another which brought down Mohamed Morsi and undemocratically brought in El-Sisi. The latter event resulted in a bloody and economically-costly Islamist uprising in the Sinai region, and also in an outsized role in government for the country's military, where El-Sisi had served as Chief of Staff before assuming the Presidency.\n\nOn both occasions, the congested nature of Cairo's city centre played a key role in the upheaval, as crowds of people were able to effectively block routes around the central square of Tahrir, bringing the city to a standstill and contributing to the success of both coups.\n\nBut with the relocation of the capital and the rings of the state to the New Administrative Capital, this will no longer be very easy to accomplish.\n\nUnlike Cairo, the new city features wide open boulevards difficult to submerge with protests, and relatively easy to navigate by military forces and the police. Keep in mind also the sprawling Octagon, will also house the headquarters of the Egyptian Air and Ground Forces, as well as an unknown but probably significant number of troops. This will make it easy to mobilise and deploy troops to suppress any potential uprising. In addition, as mentioned before, the new city has been built with strict surveillance in mind, with around 6,000 mounted security cameras and a high-tech live feed surveillance system in place.\n\nAnd if the use of the new capital by the military as a bulwark against their overthrow wasn't enough, there is further suspicion about the nature of the financial arrangements behind the construction of the city.\n\nInitially, the project was intended to be financed by UAE and Chinese investments. However, as these deals began to fall through, responsibility for the construction fell into the hands of a new company, the Administrative Capital Urban Development Company, established in 2016. That company is owned in part by the Egyptian Ministry of Housing, but — suspiciously — its controlling stake of 51% is held by the military. In essence, much of the construction on the new city has been carried out by a company whose profits are directly tied to the upper echelons of Egypt's armed forces. The company — whose chairman is the former Deputy Minister for Housing in Egypt, recorded revenues of around 800 million US dollars in 2022, according to Forbes.\n\nSo it seems that, in addition to being a sort of opulent fortress, the New Administrative Capital might also be a kind of get-rich-quick scheme for highly ranked members of the military. Don't forget, the military retains close ties to the government through President El-Sisi, who served in the armed forces for 37 years before retiring the year he became president in 2014.\n\nEven the location of the new city has come in for criticism, with some analysts pointing out that the location actually works against its intended aim. Given Cairo's extensive urban sprawl it is likely that it will continue to engulf surrounding settlements. And with the new capital situated already within touching distance of New Cairo, which is itself an outlying settlement attached to Cairo proper, there is a risk that all three cities may eventually simply merge, resulting in a sort of mega-mega-city. This would work against the intention of rebalancing the built up population of Cairo, and would only spread out the vast population to include more of the precious little inhabitable land available in upper Egypt without actually reducing the existing urban sprawl.\n\nMoreover, as has already occurred in other planned cities in Cairo's environs, the city is likely to attract the relatively affluent in Egyptian society, those either in a position to buy units in the modern new housing complexes, or those with comfortable state jobs which would bring them there. In short, an oasis for the wealthy, and not one which would attract many of the poorer classes in Egyptian society, therefore failing to resolve the massive growth of Cairo's poorer districts.\n\nWith criticism reaching deafening pitch, with Egypt's economy continuing to falter, and with only a thin trickle of residents moving in to the new city, only time will tell if the project will stand in good stead, or if — as some have predicted — it will become a white elephant serving only the interests of Egypt's most privileged, and at the massive expense of its most deprived.\n\n## Key Takeaways\n\n- Egypt's new capital aims to alleviate Cairo's overpopulation and administrative challenges.\n- The new city, overseen by Egypt's Ministry of Defense, includes extensive surveillance and grand structures.\n- Criticism surrounds the project's high cost, potential military benefits, and exclusion of lower-income residents.\n- Egypt's economy faces strain from the project's delays and increased debt.\n- The new capital's location may not effectively reduce Cairo's urban sprawl.\n\n## Frequently Asked Questions\n\n### Why is Egypt building a new capital city?\n\nEgypt is building a new capital city to alleviate the significant burden of Cairo's vast overpopulation and administrative challenges. The new city aims to provide a more controlled and modern environment for government operations and to reduce congestion in Cairo.\n\n### What are the main issues facing Cairo?\n\nCairo faces issues such as high pollution levels, housing shortages, severe poverty, circulation problems, and road traffic backups. The city's rapid population growth and dense concentration of people contribute to these problems.\n\n### How many people live in Cairo?\n\nCairo has approximately 23 million residents in its metropolitan area, making it one of the largest and most densely populated cities in the world.\n\n### What are the key features of the new administrative capital?\n\nThe new administrative capital will include a government administrative district, a diplomatic quarter, a cultural district, 21 residential districts, a large central park, a new airport, and a monorail system linking it with Cairo. It will also have extensive surveillance and green spaces.\n\n### What is the estimated cost of the new administrative capital?\n\nThe estimated cost of the new administrative capital is close to 60 billion USD, significantly higher than the original budget of 45 billion USD.\n\n### What is the population growth rate in Egypt?\n\nEgypt's population is growing at a rate of around 1.6% per year, with a current population of approximately 105 million people.\n\n### What is the significance of the new administrative capital's location?\n\nThe new administrative capital is located around 45 kilometers east of Cairo. Its location is intended to provide a more controlled and modern environment for government operations, but there are concerns that it may eventually merge with Cairo's urban sprawl.\n\n### What are some of the criticisms of the new administrative capital project?\n\nCriticisms include the massive cost, the relative impracticality for lower-income families, the over-the-top elements added to the city, and suspicions about the financial arrangements and military involvement in the project.\n\n### How many people are currently living in the new administrative capital?\n\nAs of the time of writing, only around 1,000 families are living in the new administrative capital.\n\n### What is the expected completion date for the new administrative capital?\n\nThe new administrative capital has bypassed its intended completion date of 2022, with construction expected to be complete later in 2024.\n\n## Sources\n\n- [Original MegaProjects video: Egypt is Building a Huge New Capital City. Here's Why.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auowZtMw0uQ)\n- [https://worldpopulationreview.com/cities/egypt/cairo](https://worldpopulationreview.com/cities/egypt/cairo)\n- [https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2023/08/photos-egypt-new-administrative-capital-megaproject/675179/](https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2023/08/photos-egypt-new-administrative-capital-megaproject/675179/)\n- [https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/egypt-plans-expansion-new-capital-first-residents-trickle-2024-01-04/](https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/egypt-plans-expansion-new-capital-first-residents-trickle-2024-01-04/)\n- [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-65165513](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-65165513)\n- [https://www.wfp.org/countries/egypt](https://www.wfp.org/countries/egypt)\n- [https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2023/08/photos-egypt-new-administrative-capital-megaproject/675179/](https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2023/08/photos-egypt-new-administrative-capital-megaproject/675179/)\n- [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-65165513](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-65165513)\n- [https://www.statista.com/statistics/264443/the-worlds-largest-armies-based-on-active-force-level/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/264443/the-worlds-largest-armies-based-on-active-force-level/)\n- [https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20211115-professors-criticise-egypts-new-administrative-capital/amp/](https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20211115-professors-criticise-egypts-new-administrative-capital/amp/)\n- [https://www.reuters.com/article/business/media-telecom/feature-cctv-cameras-will-watch-over-egyptians-in-new-high-tech-capital-idUSL8N33I0DO/](https://www.reuters.com/article/business/media-telecom/feature-cctv-cameras-will-watch-over-egyptians-in-new-high-tech-capital-idUSL8N33I0DO/)\n- [https://www.meed.com/egypt-establishes-capital-city-master-developer/](https://www.meed.com/egypt-establishes-capital-city-master-developer/)\n- [https://www.forbesmiddleeast.com/lists/most-impactful-real-estate-leaders-2024/khaled-abbas/](https://www.forbesmiddleeast.com/lists/most-impactful-real-estate-leaders-2024/khaled-abbas/)\n- [https://merip.org/1997/03/environmental-conditions-in-cairo/#:~:text=Microbiological%20Disease%20Diarrheal%20diseases%2C%20infectious,ten%20deaths%20among%20young%20children](https://merip.org/1997/03/environmental-conditions-in-cairo/#:~:text=Microbiological%20Disease%20Diarrheal%20diseases%2C%20infectious,ten%20deaths%20among%20young%20children)\n- [https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/02/07/mena-s-polluted-skies-and-seas-hurt-economies-livelihoods#:~:text=The%20economic%20costs%20of%20air,year%2C%20the%20highest%20level%20globally](https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/02/07/mena-s-polluted-skies-and-seas-hurt-economies-livelihoods#:~:text=The%20economic%20costs%20of%20air,year%2C%20the%20highest%20level%20globally)\n- [https://tradingeconomics.com/egypt/currency](https://tradingeconomics.com/egypt/currency)\n- [https://www.unicef.org/egypt/media/10766/file/The%20Socioeconomic%20Impact%20of%20the%20Russia-Ukraine%20Crisis%20on%20Vulnerable%20Families%20and%20Children%20in%20Egypt.pdf](https://www.unicef.org/egypt/media/10766/file/The%20Socioeconomic%20Impact%20of%20the%20Russia-Ukraine%20Crisis%20on%20Vulnerable%20Families%20and%20Children%20in%20Egypt.pdf)\n- [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-65165513](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-65165513)\n- [https://www.globalfirepower.com/defense-spending-budget.php](https://www.globalfirepower.com/defense-spending-budget.php)\n- [Hero image source](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Egyptian_Theatre_%282024%29-L1004366.jpg) by Frank Schulenburg / openverse, by-sa.\n\n## Related Coverage" url: https://megaprojects.pub/article/egypt-building-new-capital-city-why.md canonical: https://megaprojects.pub/article/egypt-building-new-capital-city-why datePublished: 2026-07-02 dateModified: 2026-07-02 author: - name: Simon Whistler url: https://megaprojects.pub/author/simon-whistler publisher: MegaProjects image: "https://media.megaprojects.pub/cdn-cgi/image/width=600,height=338,fit=cover,quality=80,format=auto/articles/auowZtMw0uQ/hero.jpg" type: NewsArticle contentHash: 7e2d12becb68b4c2ae3ac2ce200fd272b47ba91f47a94693f64db6bdffc10eca tokens: 6697 summaryUrl: https://megaprojects.pub/article/egypt-building-new-capital-city-why.md.summary.md --- Egypt is a country with a very grand history. The year of the founding of Egypt is seen as 3150 BC, through the unification of the prehistoric kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt under Pharaoh Narmer. That makes Egypt a total of 5174 years old. Now granted, the profile of the state has changed much in that time, later becoming a part of Arab civilization and eventually an Arab Republic, adopting Islam, being colonised several times and gaining and losing various different parcels of territory. Nevertheless, Egypt remains one of the oldest continuous civilisations in existence, something not lost in its great monuments, some of which rank among the oldest man-made structures and — understandably — some of the most-visited sites in the world. Some of these sites lie directly next to the Egyptian capital of Cairo, itself an ancient city with its own storied history and beauty. As mentioned by World Population Review, the city of Cairo is so old that when Alexander the Great visited Cairo's precursor Memphis, the city was already older to him than he is to us in 2024. Yet, while it will remain all of these things — as well as home to many of Egypt's jewels — for many generations to come, it will, within the next decade, no longer be the capital of the modern state of Egypt. That title will soon pass to the as-yet-unnamed city around 45 kilometres to Cairo's east, which will inherit its capital city status, as well as around six million inhabitants. So today we take a look at this extraordinary megaproject, and attempt to piece together why it is being constructed, what shall its features be, and why the decision has been made to move the capital of this storied country to it, rendering the city of Cairo to a sprawling but somewhat less significant city than it has been for millennia. ## Cairo — Buckling Beneath its Inhabitants First, a little bit about the issues facing Egypt's current capital. Cairo is Egypt's largest city and one of the largest in the world. Brimming with history and culture, it is also brimming with about 23 million residents in its metropolitan area, up from 2.5 million in 1950. As a matter of fact, there are now more people living in Cairo than were living in all of Egypt in 1950. In general, Egypt's population is booming. Already at 105 million people, which makes it the 13th-largest country in the world, it continues to grow at a rate of around 1.6% per year according to Reuters. Not only this, but the population of Egypt is densely concentrated along the Nile Delta, and in its principal cities — above all Cairo. In fact, if the area of Egypt was counted only as the Nile delta, coast and the Nile valley, it would be one of most densely-populated countries in the world, ranking only behind the city-states of Monaco and Singapore. And Cairo's neighbourhoods are growing at an electrifying pace. According to the UN, the city's population grew by almost half a million people in the last year alone. This makes it one of the fastest-growing cities in the world and — at 50,000 people per square mile — also one of its most concentrated. With such a vast population, the city is struggling to cope with a range of problems. It is highly polluted, suffers from housing shortages and severe poverty, as well as circulation problems and road traffic backups. All this is hardly surprising for a city of its gargantuan size. Even Egypt's second city — Alexandria — is struggling to contain overcrowding and circulation issues, despite being only 30% the size of Cairo. And Cairo's growth is not projected to slow down any time soon. In fact, by 2050, it is expected to surpass 38 million inhabitants, more than the current biggest city in the world in Tokyo, and second only to Mumbai, if its own population projections prove accurate. Administratively, Cairo's massive traffic jams are causing a huge problem for the state, with too many of the most important administrative buildings being located in Cairo's downtown. The city centre — as in every major city — is the most congested part of Cairo, where traffic brings the city to a complete standstill on a regular basis. And when security lockdowns — necessary for certain state visits and summits — are added to this, it can lead to complete transit chaos in the middle of the city. Moreover, the massive use of cars and the resulting air pollution come at a cost to residents' health. According to the Clean Air Fund, air pollution is directly responsible for around 18,000 premature deaths per year, and around 2% of all deaths in Cairo are considered in some way attributable to its poor air quality. Cairo's population suffers from myriad health issues, including high rates of poverty-related malnutrition and microbiological diseases such as hepatitis and typhoid fever. The healthcare expenses resulting from the poor conditions also come at a major cost to the state, a problem Egypt shares with other countries of the MENA region, where — according to the World Bank, around 2% of GDP is lost to the economic consequences of air pollution each year. The problem of pollution caused by vehicle use is also something that the government has limited means to curtail, since reducing fuel subsidies for cars would mean disadvantaging the low-income families dependent on them, many of whom live in Cairo's poorer periphery and who are dependent on their vehicles for everyday mobility. So when the decision was announced by Egypt's housing minister in 2015 to build a high-tech new capital city, one with the capacity to hold more than six million residents, it was hoped that this would alleviate the significant burden of both Cairo's vast overpopulation and its administrative challenges, as well as offering a landmark new city full of new and impressive sites to the eye. However, the project has run into a series of potentially lethal problems, which have threatened to torpedo Egypt's economy with it. ## Development of the New City First, it should be noted that the decision to fashion a new city strictly for the purpose of functioning as the administrative capital of that country is not something without precedent. Brazil, for example, changed its capital city into the planned city of Brasília, which itself was built in the 1950s. This was done to offer a more central alternative to Brazil's erstwhile capital, the coastal city of Rio de Janeiro. Other countries like Australia and Canada have designated their capital city as one significantly less populous than their most major city, no doubt in order to enact a separation between the arms of the state and the problems coming with built-up urban areas. And these cities pale in comparison to the size and structural problems faced by the city of Cairo, accumulated throughout not only its vast history but also through the rapid recent rises in the number of inhabitants. It should also be noted that fashioning new cities out of nowhere is something not unusual in the Middle East and Arabian Gulf, with parts of Dubai and the King Abdullah Economic City in Saudi Arabia as recent examples. As a matter of fact, the new capital is not even the first such planned city constructed by Egypt. Take the 6th of October City, a satellite city of some 400,000 residents 30 kilometres west of Cairo, which was founded in 1979 to alleviate some of the administrative and corporate burden from the capital. Or perhaps New Cairo City, located to Cairo's East and adjacent to the New Administrative Capital, similarly founded at the turn of the century to provide alternatives to the pent-up capital city. In fact, all these projects remain concurrently under construction, as Egypt's government races to find solutions to its expanding population and to provide housing and offices helping to decentralise Egypt's various Cairo-based headquarters and institutions. Such projects are also taking shape in other parts of Egypt. In 2018, President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi announced plans for the development of New Alamein City, a seaside resort located west of the second city of Alexandria, on the Mediterranean coast. Construction of the Alamein resort is primarily intended to draw tourism, but also to draw some of Alexandria's residents away from the city and to ease the congestion present there. Nevertheless, the New Administrative Capital ranks somewhat apart — both in its significance, and in its scale. ## The New Administrative Capital Plans for the new city were announced at the Egypt Economic Development Conference on 13 March 2015. The project, largely overseen by Egypt's Ministry of Defense, was intended to consolidate and move government buildings into a tightly controlled arena, extensively monitored by thousands of surveillance cameras. Per the announced plans, the new city was set to include a brand-new government administrative district, a diplomatic quarter, a cultural district, 21 residential districts, a huge central park, a new airport, and a newly-built monorail system linking it with Cairo. It would rehouse around thirty government ministries (with a workforce of some 55,000 people), as well as foreign embassies, the country's parliament, the residence of the President, and of course the aforementioned 6.5 million residents. The new city is already home to the tallest building in Africa, the 77-floor tall Iconic Tower, as well as a huge presidential palace, multiple ministry buildings, schools, hospitals, and much more. The site is intended to be both modern and green, with the government having announced that it will allocate 15 square metres of green space per inhabitant in the new development. The new capital will have a central "green river", a combination of open water and planted greenery twice the size of New York's Central Park. All this in order to curb Egypt's massive problem with pollution and make the country generally "greener". And so, like a great pharaonic project of the 21st century, the city is growing out of the desert, complete with gigantic governmental buildings and other trappings. And it is easy to imagine that the New Administrative Capital, when complete, would not only be a necessity in order to reduce the overcrowding of Cairo, but also a sensible solution to the administrative problems faced by ministries in the capital. But with final completion not yet attained, the Egyptian government has gone deeply into debt, and some Cairo residents have declared that they cannot afford to live in the new city. For now, the city remains mostly bereft of human habitation, with an estimate of only around 1,000 families living in the city at the time of writing. The new city does not yet have a name, and continues to be referred to simply as the New Administrative Capital (NAC), with debate continuing on what to actually call it. And while construction of the new site has continued with aplomb since the project's inception, the project has faced mounting criticism due to its various backlogs, having by now bypassed both its intended completion date of 2022 and its original budget of 45 billion US dollars by some margin. As of 2024, the money piled into the project is estimated to be close to 60 billion USD, with construction expected to be complete later this year. And with all this accumulated cost and delay, the New Administrative Capital has resulted in a wide-ranging series of problems which have tarnished the project's fanfare, and which are seen as potentially lethal to Egypt's relatively fragile economy. ## The New Capital — an Exercise in Self-Ruin? Among the many areas of mounting criticism faced by the project are its massive cost, its relative impracticality for lower-income families, as well as the over-the-top elements which have been added to it. You see, unlike Saudi Arabia and Dubai, wherein such projects are financed by way of both countries' accrued oil wealth, Egypt is not a mega-rich state and the vast cost of the project has raised major concern. In the time since President El-Sisi came to power, Egypt has been struck by low economic growth, rising inflation, and a severe currency devaluation — with the Egyptian Pound having devalued by a startling 90% since 2014. The economy has especially floundered in the most recent few years, being hampered by world events such as the War in Ukraine (which greatly impacted Egypt's trading arrangements with both Russia and Ukraine) as well as both the Covid-19 pandemic and the War in Gaza, both of which curtailed Egypt's vital tourism industry. In light of this, some of the plush aspects of the city have come in for especially acute criticism. Take for example its grand mosque, the Masjid Misr Al Kabeer, which has come in for some particularly scathing commentary on social media. The mosque and accompanying community centre cover more than 19,000 square metres and cost 800 million Egyptian pounds (or around 20.7 million British pounds) to build. It is the biggest mosque in Africa and one of the largest Islamic centres in the world, and the inside is no less grandiose than its vast exterior. Among its features, the mosque includes the highest pulpit in the world, standing at almost 17 metres tall, as well as a colossal chandelier in its main hall, the heaviest in the world at over 24,000 kilograms. When the details of the mosque's lavish interior were revealed, it led to heated discussions in Egypt. It didn't help that at the time when the project was unveiled in March 2023, Egypt was suffering from its highest level of inflation in years, at around 30% in that month alone. Another source of great outrage lies in the rather lavish spending on the relocated Ministries to the city. And no Ministry stands to gain as much from the relocation as the Ministry of Defence, whose involvement in the whole project is in itself a source of great controversy. The MOD's new headquarters, known as the Octagon, will be a simply monumental structure of over 22,000 acres, becoming at once the biggest military headquarters in the world, and also the biggest administrative building of any kind in the world. Its cost has been closely guarded by the government, but is estimated to be in the region of around 400 million US dollars. Now, building a Defence Ministry headquarters of this scale would be perhaps understandable for a military megapower: one with an overwhelmingly vast military or with a boundless military budget. But Egypt is neither of those things. At 440,000 active personnel, Egypt's military is large but still smaller than both Vietnam and South Korea's armed forces, both of them significantly smaller than Egypt in population size. But it is in Egypt's defence budget where the lopsided cost and scale of the new Ministry is more keenly felt. At around 9.4 billion dollars, Egypt's defence budget is the 35th biggest in the world, smaller than that of Qatar, Kuwait, and the UAE, and roughly similar in size to Switzerland and Norway, neither one of which has an active personnel of more than 30,000 soldiers. But for many, besides the massive economic cost, it is the some of the other suspected reasons underpinning the Defence Ministry's involvement which are causing lingering cynicism. You see, in the 2010s, Egypt went through two successful popular revolutions, one which brought down the country's longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak and culminated with the democratic election of Islamist candidate Mohamed Morsi, and another which brought down Mohamed Morsi and undemocratically brought in El-Sisi. The latter event resulted in a bloody and economically-costly Islamist uprising in the Sinai region, and also in an outsized role in government for the country's military, where El-Sisi had served as Chief of Staff before assuming the Presidency. On both occasions, the congested nature of Cairo's city centre played a key role in the upheaval, as crowds of people were able to effectively block routes around the central square of Tahrir, bringing the city to a standstill and contributing to the success of both coups. But with the relocation of the capital and the rings of the state to the New Administrative Capital, this will no longer be very easy to accomplish. Unlike Cairo, the new city features wide open boulevards difficult to submerge with protests, and relatively easy to navigate by military forces and the police. Keep in mind also the sprawling Octagon, will also house the headquarters of the Egyptian Air and Ground Forces, as well as an unknown but probably significant number of troops. This will make it easy to mobilise and deploy troops to suppress any potential uprising. In addition, as mentioned before, the new city has been built with strict surveillance in mind, with around 6,000 mounted security cameras and a high-tech live feed surveillance system in place. And if the use of the new capital by the military as a bulwark against their overthrow wasn't enough, there is further suspicion about the nature of the financial arrangements behind the construction of the city. Initially, the project was intended to be financed by UAE and Chinese investments. However, as these deals began to fall through, responsibility for the construction fell into the hands of a new company, the Administrative Capital Urban Development Company, established in 2016. That company is owned in part by the Egyptian Ministry of Housing, but — suspiciously — its controlling stake of 51% is held by the military. In essence, much of the construction on the new city has been carried out by a company whose profits are directly tied to the upper echelons of Egypt's armed forces. The company — whose chairman is the former Deputy Minister for Housing in Egypt, recorded revenues of around 800 million US dollars in 2022, according to Forbes. So it seems that, in addition to being a sort of opulent fortress, the New Administrative Capital might also be a kind of get-rich-quick scheme for highly ranked members of the military. Don't forget, the military retains close ties to the government through President El-Sisi, who served in the armed forces for 37 years before retiring the year he became president in 2014. Even the location of the new city has come in for criticism, with some analysts pointing out that the location actually works against its intended aim. Given Cairo's extensive urban sprawl it is likely that it will continue to engulf surrounding settlements. And with the new capital situated already within touching distance of New Cairo, which is itself an outlying settlement attached to Cairo proper, there is a risk that all three cities may eventually simply merge, resulting in a sort of mega-mega-city. This would work against the intention of rebalancing the built up population of Cairo, and would only spread out the vast population to include more of the precious little inhabitable land available in upper Egypt without actually reducing the existing urban sprawl. Moreover, as has already occurred in other planned cities in Cairo's environs, the city is likely to attract the relatively affluent in Egyptian society, those either in a position to buy units in the modern new housing complexes, or those with comfortable state jobs which would bring them there. In short, an oasis for the wealthy, and not one which would attract many of the poorer classes in Egyptian society, therefore failing to resolve the massive growth of Cairo's poorer districts. With criticism reaching deafening pitch, with Egypt's economy continuing to falter, and with only a thin trickle of residents moving in to the new city, only time will tell if the project will stand in good stead, or if — as some have predicted — it will become a white elephant serving only the interests of Egypt's most privileged, and at the massive expense of its most deprived. ## Key Takeaways - Egypt's new capital aims to alleviate Cairo's overpopulation and administrative challenges. - The new city, overseen by Egypt's Ministry of Defense, includes extensive surveillance and grand structures. - Criticism surrounds the project's high cost, potential military benefits, and exclusion of lower-income residents. - Egypt's economy faces strain from the project's delays and increased debt. - The new capital's location may not effectively reduce Cairo's urban sprawl. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### Why is Egypt building a new capital city? Egypt is building a new capital city to alleviate the significant burden of Cairo's vast overpopulation and administrative challenges. The new city aims to provide a more controlled and modern environment for government operations and to reduce congestion in Cairo. ### What are the main issues facing Cairo? Cairo faces issues such as high pollution levels, housing shortages, severe poverty, circulation problems, and road traffic backups. The city's rapid population growth and dense concentration of people contribute to these problems. ### How many people live in Cairo? Cairo has approximately 23 million residents in its metropolitan area, making it one of the largest and most densely populated cities in the world. ### What are the key features of the new administrative capital? The new administrative capital will include a government administrative district, a diplomatic quarter, a cultural district, 21 residential districts, a large central park, a new airport, and a monorail system linking it with Cairo. It will also have extensive surveillance and green spaces. ### What is the estimated cost of the new administrative capital? The estimated cost of the new administrative capital is close to 60 billion USD, significantly higher than the original budget of 45 billion USD. ### What is the population growth rate in Egypt? Egypt's population is growing at a rate of around 1.6% per year, with a current population of approximately 105 million people. ### What is the significance of the new administrative capital's location? The new administrative capital is located around 45 kilometers east of Cairo. Its location is intended to provide a more controlled and modern environment for government operations, but there are concerns that it may eventually merge with Cairo's urban sprawl. ### What are some of the criticisms of the new administrative capital project? Criticisms include the massive cost, the relative impracticality for lower-income families, the over-the-top elements added to the city, and suspicions about the financial arrangements and military involvement in the project. ### How many people are currently living in the new administrative capital? As of the time of writing, only around 1,000 families are living in the new administrative capital. ### What is the expected completion date for the new administrative capital? The new administrative capital has bypassed its intended completion date of 2022, with construction expected to be complete later in 2024. ## Sources - [Original MegaProjects video: Egypt is Building a Huge New Capital City. 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