China has long had their fingers in many African pies, some even going so far as to call them modern-day colonisers. Eish.

From infrastructure to natural minerals, China’s latest move sees them moving in to largely fund Egypt’s new capital.

Hello, city-yet-to-be-named, goodbye, Cairo.

Although the city has long been in the works, first announced back March 2015, a new commitment has made it all the more viable.

From Sky:

The China Fortune Land Development Company (CFLD) agreed to provide $20 billion for the currently unnamed city, after a meeting between heads of the firm and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi.

This follows a previous commitment of $15 billion from another Chinese state-owned company, bringing the project close to its $45 billion budget requirements for phase I.

Here’s a teaser:

The new city will offer a solution to “crowding, pollution and rising house prices in Cairo,” reports Sky, and is set to be located in the desert to the East of Cairo.

Construction of infrastructure has begun, and it’s even on Google Maps already:

However, this isn’t the first “satellite” city Egypt is investing in – and developers are worried that it will become a ghost town just like the others.

David Sims, an urban planner and author based in Cairo, lays it down:

The needs of Cairo should be met by the existing eight new towns around it. But people call them ghost towns.

The satellites repeated the same mistakes which are also likely to affect the new capital.

The new towns produced housing that is unaffordable, unobtainable and inaccessible for the majority of Cairo’s inhabitants.

The new towns were built with a high modernist approach that did not allow the informal enterprises and activities that most Egyptians rely on.

Just like those abandoned cities in China? Seems like it.

[source:cnn]