Country Egypt Time zone EET (UTC+2) Area 700 km² | Metropolitan area Greater Cairo Website thecapitalcairo.com | |
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The proposed new capital of Egypt is a large-scale project announced by Egyptian housing minister Mostafa Madbouly at the Egypt Economic Development Conference on 13 March 2015.
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The new, yet-unnamed city is to be located 45 kilometers (28 miles) east of Cairo and just outside the Second Greater Cairo Ring Road in a currently largely undeveloped area halfway to the seaport city of Suez. According to the plans, the city would become the new administrative and financial capital of Egypt, housing the main government departments and ministries, as well as foreign embassies. On 700 square kilometres (270 sq mi) total area, it would have a population of five million people, though it is estimated that the figure could rise to seven million.
Officially, a major reason for the undertaking of the project was to relieve congestion in Cairo, which is already one of the world's most crowded cities, with the population of greater Cairo expected to double in the next few decades.
Plans
The city is planned to consist of 21 residential districts and 25 "dedicated districts." Its downtown is to have skyscrapers and a tall monument said to resemble the Eiffel Tower and Washington Monument. The city will also have a park double the size of New York City's Central Park, artificial lakes, about 2,000 educational institutions, a technology and innovation park, 663 hospitals and clinics, 1,250 mosques, 40,000 hotel rooms, a major theme park four times the size of Disneyland, 90 square kilometers of solar energy farms, an electric railway link with Cairo, and a new international airport at the site of the preexisting Wadi al Jandali Airport currently used by the Egyptian Air Force. It will be built as a smart city. It is planned that the transfer of parliament, presidential palaces, government ministries and foreign embassies will be completed between 2020 and 2022 at a cost of US $45 billion. A full cost and timescale for the overall project has not been disclosed.
Feedback on former experiences of capital flight was looked at, for instance by meeting with representatives from Astana, which replaced Almaty as the capital city of Kazakhstan in 1997.
Construction
Speaking prior to the official announcement, Egypt's investment minister Ashraf Salman had already mentioned the possibility of a new capital being "developed, master-planned and executed by a private sector company", at no cost to the Egyptian treasury. It was revealed that the city will be built by Capital City Partners, a private real estate investment firm led by Emirati businessman Mohamed Alabbar.
When the project was officially announced in March 2015, it was revealed that the Egyptian military had already begun building a road from Cairo to the site of the future capital.
In September 2015 Egypt cancelled the MoU signed with the UAE’s Mohamed Alabbar during the March economic summit since they did not make any progress with the proposed plans. In the same month Egypt signed a new MoU with China State Construction Engineering Corporation (or "China Construction"), to “study building and financing” the administrative part of the new capital, which will include ministries, government agencies and the president’s office. According to an Egyptian news paper, Egyptian construction company El-Mokawloon El-Arab was called for constructing the water supply and sewage lines to the proposed new capital. The company stated that the studies needed were done in August and it is supposed that the project will take 3 months to supply the city with the main services needed in order to prepare it for the construction work.