Why Egypt is moving its government out of Cairo and into a brand-new desert capital

Egypt has spent more than a decade relocating its government away from Cairo, one of the most crowded capitals on the continent, to an entirely new city built from scratch in the desert roughly 45 kilometres to the east.

Cairo is home to roughly a fifth of Egypt’s population and has long struggled with chronic traffic congestion, air pollution and overcrowding that officials have described as increasingly difficult to manage within the existing city. Plans for what is now called the New Administrative Capital were first announced by Egypt’s then-housing minister Mostafa Madbouly in March 2015, positioned as part of the country’s broader Vision 2030 economic strategy, with construction formally beginning in 2016.

The project, spanning roughly 700 square kilometres and comparable in size to Singapore, is overseen by the Administrative Capital for Urban Development, a company in which Egypt’s military holds a 51 percent stake and the Ministry of Housing the remaining 49 percent. Government ministries, the Egyptian parliament and other state institutions have already relocated there in phases, with tens of thousands of government employees now working in the new city.

At the heart of the new capital’s Central Business District stands the Iconic Tower, a 385-metre skyscraper that became Africa’s first supertall building, alongside a roughly ten-kilometre Central Park — described as twice the size of New York’s Central Park — intended to combat desertification while supporting residents’ wellbeing.