Egypt Property Investment News

Egypt plans to reclaim deserts to create more housing

Egypt’s lack of available land for housing is causing the government to encourage people to move to the desert. With only 5% of the country habitable, almost all of Egypt’s 74 million people live along the Nile River and the Mediterranean Sea. This has led to overcrowded living conditions in the habitable areas. For instance, Cairo is one of the most densely populated cities on earth. This problem is set to worsen, given that Egypt’s population is expected to double by 2050.

The Egyptian government’s solution to this growing lack of adequate housing is to invest an estimated $70 billion to reclaim 3.4 million acres of desert over the next ten years. The plan is to, in effect, turn the desert green; to make it habitable and suitable for housing while at the same time making it prime for cultivation. In order to do this the government will need to use the Nile River as a water source (possibly needing a staggering five billion cubic metres of water each year), given that rainfall is very rare in Egypt. This project to reclaim deserts would mean expanding the country’s farmland by up to 40% by 2017.

The plan is already starting to come to fruition – literally – in some areas of the country. Apricot and banana trees are springing up in the newly green areas of the desert just north of Cairo’s pyramids, site of the Desert Development Centre where scientists are working on high-tech methods of cultivating the desert.

The infrastructure of Egypt’s cities is straining at the overcrowding, leading the government to this ambitious project. Among the incentives they will offer to help move some of the population from the cities to the deserts is cheap desert land for college graduates. "The government feels it needs to reduce the number of people in high density areas, which puts a lot of pressure on resources like fertile land," said Mostafa Saleh, professor of ecology at Al Azhar University in Cairo.

Once the land begins to become available, it is likely that not only government-incentivised housing will appear, but also real estate projects from developers looking to get in to this new market. Those considering an investment property in Egypt would do well to keep an eye on the country’s blooming deserts.