Germany cooperates with Egypt to build safe railways with €12B investment: Ambassador

CAIRO - 29 May 2022: German Ambassador to Cairo Frank Hartmann said that building a modern, safe, environmentally friendly and affordable railway system for millions of Egyptians through a German company is a historic milestone in our long-standing bilateral relationship, which celebrates its 70th anniversary this year. 

 

“Germany has always been a partner and friend of Egypt’s modernization,” Hartmann stated.

 

 

The German embassy in Cairo announced in a statement that a joint cooperation agreement was signed in the presence of President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, CEO of Siemens, Roland Bosch and Minister of Transport Kamel El-Wazir, on the agreement for the second tranche of investment in the construction of the railway system, totaling €12 billion.

 

 

 

The German company Siemens Mobility is cooperating with Egypt to build a safe and sustainable electric railway system, consisting of high-speed regional trains, freight trains and a new 2,000 km railway network.

 

 

 

For his part, German Ambassador Frank Hartmann thanked President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi for the long-term trust that the Egyptian government places in German technology, and congratulated the Egyptian government and the Siemens-led coalition on this pioneering agreement.

 

 

 

As part of the project, Siemens will provide a fully electrified railway network, as well as the latest high-speed trains of the type used in Germany such as Intercity Express (ICE) and regional freight trains, with an investment of €12 billion. The Egyptians will build railway stations, tunnels, and bridges, and they will take part in the foundation works.

 

 

 

Frank added in a statement that the project will create about 45,000 local jobs, and put Egypt at the forefront of efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change, as rail travel plays an important role, as it reduces emissions by 70-85 percent due to the use of electric energy in operational process, the high-speed railway is the largest infrastructure project in Egypt so far, and the largest single project in Siemens' 175-year history.

 

 

 

Germany is heavily involved with Egypt in infrastructure projects, as well as education, vocational training and energy supply projects such as gas-fired power plants, and similarly in partnership with Siemens, due to which Egypt enjoys a stable electrical capacity.

 

Egypt has also become a source of this energy, and these areas are the basis for further industrialization and modernization in the state. 

 

German Chancellor Schulz himself, during a recorded speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, thanked the representatives of the Egyptian government for the confidence they placed in German engineering to implement this project.

 

 

Siemens is Egypt's partner in the first tranche of the railway project, which was signed in September 2021, to implement a high-speed railway linking the cities of Marsa Matrouh and Alexandria through Cairo, the new administrative capital and Ain Sukhna port on the Red Sea. This second tranche will extend the line through Luxor and Aswan to Abu Simbel, which leads to the establishment of a railway network with a total length of about 2000 km.