The Egypt data explorer

Real Egyptian data, charted.

Every chart below is drawn from EgyBI's knowledge base — the same data that powers the practice challenges. Every figure is cited; where sources genuinely disagree, we say so rather than smoothing it over.

Egypt on the map

All 27 governorates, coloured by the data.

A real geographic choropleth — the kind of view Power BI or Tableau would build — filled with cited figures for every one of Egypt's 27 governorates. Switch the metric to see how population concentrates on the Nile while the desert governorates sprawl empty. Hover any governorate for its exact figure.

Colour by:

Boundaries: geoBoundaries.org (EGY ADM1, CC-BY 4.0), simplified & bundled offline. Metrics: population, density & area from the EgyBI knowledge base (CAPMAS, Nov 2023); growth compares that against the 2017 CAPMAS census (via citypopulation.de) — see the desert frontier governorates (South Sinai +43%, Matrouh +36%) outpace the crowded Delta; urban % is the urban share (Wikipedia governorates table, CAPMAS ~2016 — a proxy, ±1–2 points) and lights up the fully-urban city governorates (Cairo, Port Said, Suez). Colours are quantile bins (six equal-count groups) so extreme skew — Cairo's ~10.5M vs South Sinai's ~146k — stays readable. Every figure is queryable on the Practice page.

Economy

GDP & its composition.

GDP (current US$)

Source: World Bank (NY.GDP.MKTP.CD). The 2017 and 2022–24 dips are largely EGP devaluation effects on the nominal-USD figure — real GDP kept growing. 2025/26 snapshot (IMF/World Bank, 2026): real GDP growth ~4.3% in 2025 (the IMF lifted its FY25/26 forecast to 4.5%), and inflation is easing fast — from a 2024 average of 33.3% toward ~20% in 2025 and about 13% by early 2026.

GDP by sector (% of GDP)

Source: World Bank value-added shares. Shares sum to ~95%; the residual is taxes-less-subsidies (WB methodology). Services dominate, agriculture ~11%.

A uniquely Egyptian data point

The Suez Canal — and its ongoing collapse.

One of the world's most important shipping arteries and Egypt's top hard-currency earner — until Red Sea shipping attacks from late 2023 diverted much of the world's fleet around Africa. The hit deepened through fiscal-year 2024/25.

Sources: Suez Canal Authority, Central Bank of Egypt, Egypt's Ministry of Planning (updated 2026). After the 2024 plunge, revenue kept falling: FY2024/25 dropped ~45.5% to about $3.6bn (from $6.6bn a year earlier), with overall canal activity down ~52% and transiting ships down to ~12,400. Calendar-2024 revenue is variously reported near $3.9bn — the exact figure differs by window (calendar vs fiscal year), which is why both red bars are flagged as the crisis period.

Trade & tourism

What Egypt sells, and who visits.

Top export categories (2023)

Source: Lloyds Bank / Coface trade profile. Petroleum & electricity lead at ~33% of exports; garments, fertilizers, plastics, and gas follow.

Tourism — arrivals & revenue

Source: Ministry of Tourism & Antiquities, CBE, UNWTO. 2025's ~19M is officially confirmed (SIS/Minister). 2021 revenue is blank — sources disagree.

More of Egypt, in data

Demographics, prices & energy.

Population growth (millions)

Source: World Bank (SP.POP.TOTL). Egypt quadrupled from ~27M (1960) to ~117M (2024). CAPMAS's domestic count (~107M) is lower by methodology.

Electricity generation mix (2023)

Source: Ember. The grid is ~88% fossil (mostly natural gas); wind + solar reached ~5% in 2023, up from ~1% in 2015.

Inflation & the Egyptian pound (the FX crisis)

Source: World Bank. The 2017 and 2023 inflation spikes track the 2016 float and the 2022–24 devaluations, as the pound fell from ~10 to ~45+ per dollar. A textbook example of handling volatile, event-driven data.

Largest governorates by population

Source: CAPMAS (Nov 2023). Top 8 of 27 governorates. Over 95% of Egyptians live on ~4% of the land — the Nile Valley and Delta.

Digital economy

Egypt's tech rise.

The ICT sector nearly doubled its share of GDP — from 3.2% (2018) to 5.8% (2024) — and was the country's fastest-growing sector for roughly seven years. A generation of Egyptian tech companies grew with it.

Sources: Egypt's Ministry of Communications & IT (MCIT); company reporting. Internet penetration ~73% (World Bank, 2023); ~82M users (industry estimate).

Business & investment

Who owns corporate Egypt.

A handful of family groups anchor Egypt's private sector — the Sawiris family in construction, telecom and fertilizers; the Mansours in automotive and retail distribution. Six Egyptians sit on the Forbes real-time billionaires list, led by Nassef Sawiris, the country's richest person.

Egypt's billionaires by net worth (US$ bn)

Source: Forbes / Forbes Middle East (2026). Egypt fields six billionaires worth about $23.1bn combined, led by Nassef Sawiris (~$9.6bn). Net worth is a point-in-time estimate that moves with markets and currency — the top three eased vs 2025 (Nassef 9.9→9.6, Naguib 5.6→5.0, Mohamed Mansour 4.0→3.4). Only Forbes-listed billionaires are shown; stake-value figures for Ahmed Ezz and Safwan Thabet are tracked separately and flagged as not full net worth.

Connected Egypt

Online, trading, and scrolling.

In a decade Egypt went from roughly a third online to three-quarters — reshaping how ~106 million people bank, shop, watch and argue. Here's the connectivity climb, who Egypt trades with, and where its attention actually goes.

The connectivity climb

Source: World Bank / ITU. Internet use went from ~38% (2015) to ~75% (2024). Read the 2019 jump with care — it reflects a survey/methodology break, not one year of real doubling. Mobile subscriptions per 100 dipped in 2018 after a SIM re-registration clean-up.

Where attention goes (2025)

Source: DataReportal, Digital 2025 Egypt. Ranked by advertising reach, not unique people — so totals can exceed the adult population and should be read as reach, not headcount. YouTube, Facebook and TikTok lead by a wide margin.

Who Egypt trades with (2023)

Source: OEC / UN Comtrade mirror (2023), US$ billions. Imports concentrate — China alone is ~15.5% — while exports spread out across Turkiye, Italy, the Gulf and the US. Figures differ modestly from CAPMAS national statistics.

Feeding Egypt

Growing a lot — and still importing the most.

Egypt is a serious farming nation: a top-5 global tomato grower, the world's top orange exporter, and producer of ~9 million tonnes of wheat a year. Yet with ~106 million people to feed, it is also the world's largest wheat importer — the gap between what the Nile valley can grow and what the country eats.

Staple crop production (million tonnes)

Source: FAOSTAT (official, 2015–2023). Wheat holds near ~9M tonnes; rice collapsed in 2018 when the government cut paddy acreage to save Nile water, then rebounded strongly by 2023. Egypt still imports ~13M tonnes of wheat a year on top of this — domestic output can't close the gap.

Through the ages

Egypt from the Ptolemies to today.

A sourced timeline of eras and turning points — the same data behind the platform's history challenges.

Modern Egypt

National megaprojects.

2026 status, honestly flagged: the Grand Egyptian Museum was fully inaugurated 1 Nov 2025; the Cairo Monorail NAC line became operational May 2026 (Africa's longest); the New Administrative Capital is occupied but sparsely (~30,000 residents vs a 6.5–7M long-term target); High-Speed Rail and El Dabaa nuclear remain under construction with no section live yet. Targets are labelled as targets in the data. Sources: SIS, Wikipedia, World Nuclear News, France 24.

Logistics & transport

Building a trade hub on two seas.

Egypt sits on the Suez Canal and wants to turn that geography into a logistics industry: dry ports, the SCZONE's six ports, the deepest man-made basin in the world at Ain Sokhna, and a rail-freight upgrade. Its World Bank Logistics Performance score has climbed to 3.1 — but the 2030 capacity ambitions are still targets.

Capacity today vs the 2030 target

Sources: Egypt's State Information Service (SIS) national logistics strategy; World Bank LPI (2023). The 2030 figures are official targets, not achievements — seaport cargo ~185→400 Mt/yr and container handling 12→40M TEU/yr. Read the pairs as ambition against a current baseline.

Art & cinema

Hollywood on the Nile.

Egypt runs the oldest, largest and most influential film industry in the Arab world. From Studio Misr (1935) and the Golden Age to a 2025 box-office recovery, it has produced the majority of all Arab cinema — and a century of singers and artists who defined the region's culture.

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Feature films produced
Most of all Arab output (Wikipedia)
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Cairo Film Festival founded
Africa's only FIAPF Category-A festival
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Egyptian share of box office
2025; 8 of the top 10 (Screen Daily)
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Box office (2025, projected)
~14.3M admissions, pre-COVID levels

Sources: Wikipedia (Cinema of Egypt, Studio Misr), Ahram Online, Britannica, Screen Daily, Variety, Guinness World Records. Disputed birth/death dates (Umm Kulthum, Soad Hosny) are flagged in the underlying data.

Sports

The Pharaohs — and a squash superpower.

Egypt holds a record 7 Africa Cup of Nations titles, Al Ahly a record 12 CAF Champions Leagues, and the country utterly dominates world squash. It was the first African and Arab nation to compete at the Olympics (Stockholm 1912).

Title tallies across competitions

Sources: CAF, FIFA, PSA, Egyptian Olympic Committee / SIS. Different competitions — compare within a bar's category, not across. Olympic figure is total medals (38); the rest are titles.

Football

Egyptian Premier League titles (top clubs)

Source: Wikipedia (Egyptian Premier League, since 1948). Only seven clubs have ever won it; Al Ahly holds ~68% of all titles. Cairo's Ahly–Zamalek duopoly is among the most lopsided in world football.

Mohamed Salah, for Egypt

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Caps
All-time appearances
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Goals
Egypt's all-time top scorer
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AFCON titles
A record for any nation
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World Cup
Qualified undefeated (CAF Group A)

Sources: Wikipedia, FIFA, Premier League. Caps/goals are as of July 2026 and grow with his career. Egypt finished 4th at AFCON 2025 in Morocco.

Handball

Handball — Africa's dominant side

Egypt's men are the strongest handball nation outside Europe: a record-tying 10 African Championships (beating Tunisia 37–24 in the 2026 final in Rwanda), a 4th place at both the 2001 World Championship and the Tokyo 2020 Olympics — the best-ever finishes by a non-European team — and back-to-back youth world titles (U-21 in 1993, U-19 in 2019, the first non-European winners).

Source: Wikipedia (Egypt men's national handball team); Egypt Independent. Egypt hosted the first 32-team World Championship in 2021 (finished 7th).

Industry, business & investment

What Egypt builds — and who's investing.

Manufacturing is ~32% of GDP, led by petroleum, steel, textiles and the largest pharmaceutical industry in the MENA region. In 2024 the UAE's $35bn Ras El Hekma deal became the largest single foreign investment in Egypt's history.

Landmark investment & IMF deals (US$ billion)

Sources: Bloomberg, IMF, Arab News, Xinhua. SCZONE cumulative totals vary by window ($8.3–11.6bn); the 2024 IMF $8bn is the augmented total, not new money. Both are flagged in the data.

Science, space & research

Satellites, reactors & a world-first in health.

Egypt has launched satellites since 2007, hosts the African Space Agency, is building its first nuclear plant (El Dabaa, 4.8 GW), and in 2023 became the first country worldwide awarded WHO "gold tier" on the path to eliminating hepatitis C.

Egypt's satellites launched (cumulative)

Source: Space in Africa, SIS, Wikipedia. Earth-observation and communications satellites, 2007–2024, with partners incl. Russia, China, France and Germany.

Hepatitis C prevalence collapse

Source: WHO. The "100 Million Seha" campaign cut prevalence from ~10% (2016) to 0.38% (2023) using locally made antivirals — new infections down ~97% in eight years.

Water & irrigation

A desert nation's water, engineered.

Egypt lives well below the water-scarcity line and depends on the Nile for ~97% of its renewable water — so it re-engineers every drop: record-breaking treatment plants, vast land-reclamation, canal lining and a national desalination push.

How Egypt uses its water

Source: FAO AQUASTAT. Agriculture takes ~86%. The split rests on a 2010 baseline — the proportion is stable and robust, the absolute volume is dated (flagged in the data).

Bahr El-Baqar — a Guinness record

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m³ of drainage water treated per day

The world's largest water-treatment plant — one of three Guinness World Records — reclaiming 456,000 feddans of Sinai farmland.

Source: Egypt SIS / ACCIONA. Distinct from the New Delta / El-Hammam plant (7.5M m³/day, agricultural drainage).

Transport & infrastructure

A country laying 2,000 km of high-speed rail.

Egypt is building one of the world's largest new transport networks at once — a three-line Siemens high-speed railway, two monorails, new metro lines and an LRT. Most of it is still under construction, so the data flags what's running today versus what's promised.

Major rail projects by length (km)

Sources: Siemens Mobility, Alstom, Vinci, National Authority for Tunnels. The 2,000 km high-speed network and 6th-of-October monorail are under construction; costs are approximate.

Education & knowledge

20 universities on the world stage.

Egypt placed 20 universities in the QS World University Rankings 2026, up from 15 the year before — led by Cairo University (347th) and the American University in Cairo (381st). Al-Azhar traces its teaching to 970 CE, making it one of the oldest universities on Earth.

Source: QS World University Rankings 2026. Bands (e.g. 1201–1400) are QS's own grouping for lower ranks. Enrollment figures are approximate.

World heritage

Seven UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

Six cultural, one natural — from the Giza pyramid fields to the Whale Valley fossils that record how whales left the land. Six were inscribed in a single year, 1979.

Defence, in figures

A regional heavyweight, by the public numbers.

On open, published indices Egypt ranks among the world's stronger militaries — 1st in Africa and 19th of 145 globally on Global Firepower's 2026 index — and it is one of the world's largest arms importers. This section is public rankings and figures only: no operational detail, and every number is an estimate from a cited open source.

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Global Firepower rank
of 145 (2026); #1 in Africa
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Active personnel
GFP 2026 estimate
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World arms-importer rank
SIPRI 2020–24 (3.3% of global)
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Total aircraft
GFP reported stock

Where Egypt's arms imports come from (2020–2024)

Source: SIPRI Arms Transfers Database (2020–2024 window), shares of Egypt's total arms imports. The supplier mix is now European-led — Germany, Italy and France — not US-led. Figures are SIPRI trend-indicator shares, not dollar values, and the volume of imports fell ~44% versus 2015–19.

Every number here is real and cited.

Primary sources include the World Bank, the Central Bank of Egypt, CAPMAS, the Suez Canal Authority, Egypt's State Information Service, UNESCO, and the Met Museum. Disputed and approximate figures are flagged in the data itself — accuracy over polish.

Where to next

Carry on through Egypt.