Egypt

The race for competitiveness and predominance in providing sea routes for the global container business is costing the operators of the Suez and Panama Canals billions of dollars to upgrade their services and facilities. In the case of Suez, broadening the waterway will increase the number of ships that can navigate the canal simultaneously to 97 (see Construction chapter)....

Of all the plans envisaged for the Egyptian ports, privatisation is not one of them. When he announced expansion plans in 2014, Ibrahim El Demeiry, the former minister of transport, was quite adamant about the state retaining control of the nation’s 15 main commercial ports, which between them have 32.4 km of berths and cover an area of 481.54 sq km, counting both land and sea...

It is almost as though the Egyptian transport industry has taken its theme tune from a children’s film. The sign out song of “Madagascar” is “We like to move it, move it”, and that is what everyone connected with transport in Egypt seems on a mission to achieve.

The long and proud tradition that saw Egypt establish the first railway in Africa – running roughly 200 km from Alexandria to Cairo – in the mid-19th century continues as part of Egypt’s economic renaissance with multibillion-dollar projects ranging from high-speed links said to be capable of travelling at 350-km per hour (kph) to new carriages and safety devices. The network...