EU Companies Bet Big On Egypt’s Future

At a bilateral investment conference in Cairo on July 1, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced that European companies were signing deals for more than $43 billion with Egyptian companies “ranging from hydrogen to water management, from construction to chemicals, from shipping to aviation and to automotive.” 

“Egypt really is enjoying a moment,” observes David Lubin, a senior research fellow at Chatham House in London and a seasoned global economic observer. That could well be an understatement.

Shortly before, GV Investments, Egypt’s sovereign investment fund, signed four agreements worth $40 billion with European developers to produce green ammonia, a renewable form of fertilizer that joins hydrogen extracted from water and nitrogen obtained from air. The deal potentially makes Egypt a big player in the renewable energy market.

Those announcements followed a partnership agreement that GV Investments signed in May with Chinese automobile manufacturer FAW to produce FAW’s low-cost electric sedan, the Bestune E05 model, locally for the Egyptian market. A month earlier, the EU announced that it would provide $1.1 billion in short-term financial aid to support the Egyptian economy, one leg of a $5.4 billion assistance package through 2027 that still needs to be approved by EU members. A month earlier, Egyptian President Abd el-Fattah el-Sisi’s government signed an expanded $8 billion loan deal with the International Monetary Fund.