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Qatar to invest $30bn in Egypt’s Alam El Roum, a Mediterranean development with 250,000 jobs, 7.2km beach and 4,500 hotel rooms.
Qatar and Egypt have announced one of the region’s largest real estate and tourism partnerships, with Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment Company signing an agreement with Egypt’s New Urban Communities Authority (NUCA) to develop a $29.7bn integrated urban and tourism project on the North Coast of Matrouh Governorate.
The announcement of the Alam Al-Roum project confirms the resurgence of Gulf capital in Egypt, where Doha, Abu Dhabi, and Riyadh are now vying to transform the coast into regional tourist hubs. But for the land of the pharaohs, this influx of capital is also helping to stabilize the Egyptian pound, which has been in freefall for several years.
The Qatari Diar real estate group, a subsidiary of Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, plans to invest $29.7 billion in a vast tourism and residential project on the Egyptian Mediterranean coast, it was learned on Wednesday, November 5, 2025.
The project, named Alam Al-Roum, will cover nearly 2,000 hectares approximately 480 km northwest of Cairo, in the province of Matrouh. It will include luxury residential areas, marinas, golf courses, schools, universities, and public infrastructure, with the ambition of transforming this still pristine stretch of coastline into a year-round tourist destination.
The agreement, concluded with the New Urban Communities Authority (NUCA), provides for a payment of $3.5 billion for the acquisition of the land, with the remainder – $26.2 billion – representing in-kind investments for the construction of infrastructure.
This commitment is part of the $7.5 billion investment program that Doha pledged to Egypt this year, as the country seeks to bolster its foreign exchange reserves and reduce its budget deficit. With the Egyptian pound depreciating by nearly 70% since 2022, real estate and coastal assets have become particularly attractive to Gulf investors, whose currencies are pegged to the dollar.
This would be the largest Qatari investment in Egypt since the normalization of diplomatic relations between the two countries in 2021, following the end of the blockade imposed on Doha by several Arab states between 2017 and 2021.
Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly is due to attend the official signing of the Egyptian-Qatari partnership on Thursday concerning the development of the « Similla and Alam Al-Roum » area, the government said in an invitation sent to the media.
According to financial sources, the realization of this project could also unlock $2.5 billion in disbursements from the IMF, linked to an $8 billion program signed in March 2024, some tranches of which had been suspended pending concrete external investments.
The project rivals the Ras El-Hekma development, backed by Emirati investors, and contributes to Egypt’s strategy of transforming its Mediterranean coast into a regional tourism and financial hub. It is part of a broader trend of Gulf capital inflows into Egyptian tourism, recently exemplified by the launch of Marassi Red Sea – an $18.6 billion resort developed by Emaar Misr with Saudi and Emirati partners on the Red Sea coast.
Qatari Diar, already present in the country with the St. Regis Cairo, CityGate and NEWGIZA, could generate up to $1.8 billion in annual revenue with this project, of which 15% would go to NUCA once the costs are amortized, according to the same source.
Fiacre E. Kakpo
Edited by MF Vahid Codjia