AfDB to secure $1.5 billion for Egypt’s capital city project: Chief

African Development Bank Group (AfDB) intends to secure a loan worth around $1.5 billion to finance Egypt’s new administrative capital project, the lender’s president Akinwumi Adesina announced Saturday.

In keynote remarks at the African international business forum kicked off in Egypt’s Sharm El-Sheikh on Saturday, AfDB’s president said the proposed new capital city is a giant project that needs finances worth around $44 billion.

Last March, the Egyptian government announced plans to build a new capital to the east of the present one, Cairo.

If and when it is completed – and that could take years – it will be about the size of Singapore, with an airport larger than Heathrow.

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.

The New Capital City project will be executed through several distinctive phases, Housing Minister Moustafa Madbouli said earlier.

The first phase of the plan covers 10,500 feddans of land, and is to include the construction of ministries and other government buildings, a commercial center, 15,000 housing units, schools, a university complex, the initial stages of a “medical city” and exhibition grounds,

The project aims 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.