Sisi ratifies Kuwaiti grant to fund feasibility study for railway line between Egypt, Sudan

CAIRO – 9 October 2022: President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi has ratified a Kuwaiti grant to fund a project of a railway connection between Egypt and Sudan.

The presidential ratification was published in the official gazette, Al-Waqa'i' al-Misriyya, on Sunday to be effective on the following day of the publication.

The deal was signed in April 2022 between the Egyptian Ministry of Cooperation and the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED) in Jeddah. As per the deal, the Kuwaiti Fund would grant 750,000 dinars (($2.5 million) to prepare a feasibility study for establishing a railway connection between Egypt and Sudan.

In November 2019, Egypt announced that it is considering building a railway line of 6,000 km in length to connect Upper Egypt with Sudan to facilitate the movement of Egyptian exports to Sudan then to central Africa.

The new line will start from Abu Simbel city, southern Egypt, to the Sudanese town of Abu Hamad. The line's construction takes 36 months. A transitional station will be established in the Sudanese city of Wadi Halfa in the northern part, Egypt’s state-owned news Agency MENA reported on October 9, 2018.