As of July 1, 2023, the population density of Egypt was close to 937.6 individuals per square kilometer. Cairo, the capital city, was the most densely inhabited in the country, with 5,668.4 people per square kilometer. Kalyoubia followed, with nearly 5,250 inhabitants per square kilometer. Moreover, the third and fourth most densely populated governorates were Alexandria and Gharbia, with around 3,195 people per square kilometer and 2,795 people per square kilometer, respectively. It is worth noting that Cairo, parts of Giza, and Kalyoubia make up Greater Cairo due to their proximity.

Market Overview Egypt's commercial real estate market is poised for significant growth, driven by a thriving economy and increasing foreign investments. The market size stood at 9.41 million in 2025 and is projected to reach 10.19 million by 2033, exhibiting a CAGR of 10.19%. Key drivers of this growth include rising urbanization, population growth, and government initiatives to attract investments. Key market trends include the emergence of smart buildings, increased demand for flexible office spaces, and the growth of e-commerce, which is driving demand for industrial and logistics properties. Market Segments and Key Players The commercial real estate market in Egypt comprises various segments, including offices, retail, industrial and logistics, multi-family, and hospitality. Major key cities include Cairo, Alexandria, Giza, Port Said, and the Rest of Egypt. Leading companies in the market include Amer Group, Emaar Properties, Palm Hills Developments, Dorra Group, Talaat Moustafa Group, Hassan Allam Holding, The Arab Contractors, Secon Egypt, Orascom Construction PLC, and Rowad Modern Engineering. The government's efforts to enhance infrastructure, ease of doing business, and the availability of skilled labor are further expected to support the growth of the market in the coming years. Recent developments include: December 2022: Egyptian developer Urbnlanes Developments, a subsidiary of Emeel Abdalla Investments, will launch a 3-billion-Egyptian-pound (USD 122 million) commercial project in the 5th Settlement, New Cairo, in the first quarter of 2023, October 2022: Egypt's Afifi Investment Group acquired Uni Sharm Hotel in Sharm El-Sheikh and invested 400 million pounds ($17 million) to modernize the hotel, upgrade it to a 4-star category and introduce commercial and retail elements.. Key drivers for this market are: Increasing tourism is boosting the market, Rapid surge in population is driving the market. Potential restraints include: Rising inflation in the Market restraining the growth, Increasing cost of real estate affecting the growth of the market. Notable trends are: Rise in Demand for Commercial Spaces Across Greater Cairo.

Abstract

In every society, young people carry the promise of a better future. They are the building blocks of a country’s economy and society and its most essential human resource. In Egypt, young people are not only its most important capital but they also constitute the largest segment of the population. According to the 2006 census, approximately 40% of Egyptians are between the ages of 10 and 29. With the right investments, this youth bulge will represent a demographic opportunity that will positively shape the country’s future. Once Egypt’s young people reach working age, given a relatively low proportion of older and younger non-working populations to support, they will present a “demographic gift” of low economic dependency. However, the large size of this cohort places enormous pressures on social services and the labor market and creates a major challenge for development planning. Failures in these institutions could result in the social and economic marginalization of a large proportion of youth that will be unable to compete in an increasingly globalized economy, hence turning the “gift” to demographic “burden”.

Effective planning relies on high-quality research. The Population Council seeks to build the evidence base for better policies and programs with the view of generating research that makes a difference. Young people have been a primary focus for the Council for decades, directing research to determine their conditions and contexts, and providing evidence for decision-makers. In 1998, the Population Council published Transitions to Adulthood, a comprehensive profile of youth based on the Council’s 1997 Adolescence and Social Change in Egypt (ASCE) survey. The results of ASCE have been an important resource for programming for adolescents in Egypt.

Responding to the dearth of data on youth in Egypt, the Population Council conducted a comprehensive situation analysis of Egyptian adolescents and young people: the Survey of Young People in Egypt (SYPE), which covers a nationally representative sample of 15,029 young people aged 10-29.

The SYPE collected data on the five key life transitions of education, work, family formation; health, and civic and political participation. SYPE follows up to an earlier survey conducted by the Population Council in 1997, The Adolescence and Social Change in Egypt (ASCE) survey. With focus on young people aged 10 to 19, analysis of ASCE identified tobacco use, female circumcision, anemia, growth stunting and delayed sexual maturation, poor management of menstruation, and underutilization of health insurance as six priority issues for youth in Egypt. SYPE updates the results provided by the earlier survey and expands their scope.

Geographic coverage

The SYPE sample is nationally representative, covering all governorates in Egypt, including the five Frontier governorates. The SYPE sample is considered to be an innovative design, because it allows for a priori inclusion of slum areas within the urban sample.

Analysis unit

1- Households. 2- Youth aged (10-29) years.

Universe

The survey covered a national sample of households and selected youth aged 10-29.

Kind of data

Sample survey data [ssd]

Sampling procedure

Sample Design

The sample of the Survey of Young People in Egypt 2009 (SYPE) was designed in such a way as to be representative at the national as well as regional levels. The sample size of approximately 17,000 young people between the ages of 10 and 29 was selected to provide estimates of key indicators related to adolescents and youth for the country as a whole and for four administrative regions (Urban governorates, Lower Egypt governorates, Upper Egypt governorates and the Frontier governorates), and, where relevant, for the urban and rural segments of these regions. These indicators include never enrollment rates, dropout rates, the incidence of child labor, and unemployment rates. Based on previous statistics about the incidence of young people in the relevant age and sex groups, we determined that a nationally-representative sample of 11,000 households would be sufficient. To obtain accurate estimates for the Frontier governorates, these governorates had to be oversampled. As a result, the SYPE is not a self-weighted sample and weights are needed to obtain the correct estimates.

Sample Frame

The SYPE sample was designed as a multi-stage stratified cluster sample. The primary sampling units (PSUs) were selected from a CAPMAS master sample. The master sample is a stratified cluster sample that contains 2,400 PSUs, divided into 1,080 urban and 1,320 rural PSUs. These PSUs are drawn from a frame of enumeration areas (EAs) covering the entire country prepared by CAPMAS from the 2006 Population Census. Each EA is drawn up in such a way as to contain roughly 1500 dwelling units. The sample is stratified into governorates and each governorate is further stratified into urban and rural segments, where relevant. The distribution of PSUs across strata in the master sample reflects the distribution of the population so as to produce a self-weighted sample.

To achieve a fairly wide geographic dispersion in the SYPE sample and thus minimize the design effect, we set the number of households per cluster to 25. To obtain these 25 households, 25 dwelling units were systematically selected from the roughly 1500 listed in each EA. To get the sample size we needed, we set the number of required PSUs to 455, for a total sample size of 11,375 households. The distribution of PSUs across governorates and urban and rural areas in both the master sample and the SYPE sample are shown in (Table 1 in Appendix C of the final report available among the external resources). The final sample of households interviewed was made up of 11,372 households, which yielded a total of 15,029 young people aged 10-29.

The PSU's in the SYPE sample were drawn from the EA's in the master sample at a rate of roughly 19%-20%. With the exception of the Frontier Governorates and the Luxor administrative area, the sampling rate varies in a relatively narrow range from 14% to 27%. To get good representation from the sparsely populated Frontier Governorates, we increased the sampling rate significantly, in some cases retaining all the PSU's in the master sample. Weights will be derived at the level of the administrative region to account for these varying sampling rates.

Selecting the Urban Slums Sub-Sample

One of the objectives of SYPE is to obtain separate estimates for young people living in urban slums (referred to in the final report chapters as informal urban areas). To make sure we had enough representation of urban slums, we used a study conducted by the Information and Decision Support Center of the Egyptian Cabinet of Ministers (IDSC) to classify urban PSU's in the CAPMAS master sample into slum and non-slum areas. Deciding how to allocate urban PSUs to slum and non-slum areas was not a straightforward exercise given the unreliability of the data on the population of the slum areas.

First, we had to make a decision on how to allocate the 212 urban PSUs to slum and non-slum PSUs. The most reasonable estimate of the share of slums in the urban population was close to 20%, leading us to allocate 44 of the 212 urban PSU's in the sample to slum areas. Second, we had to allocate these 44 slum PSUs to the various governorates. This allocation was done in such a way as to match as closely as possible, the distribution of the number of slum areas across governorates is shown in (Table 2 in Appendix C of the final report available among the external resources).

Ideally, we should have allocated slum PSUs across governorates according to each governorate's share of slum population rather than its share in the number of slum areas. However, given the unreliable information about the population of slum areas, it was impossible to do the allocation in terms of population. This allocation decision is likely to understate the true share of slums in governorates such as Cairo, Giza and Alexandria, where the size of slums is likely to be larger than average, and overstate slum populations in governorates like Damietta, Dakahlia and Sharkia where the size of slums is probably smaller than average. Without reliable data on slum populations, it is unfortunately not possible to use weights to correct for this possible bias in the geographic distribution of slums.

** More information on the sampling procedures is available in Appendix C in the English final report available among the external resources.

Sampling deviation

Attrition was due to the individual's rejection or unavailability during the data collectors' visit or their subsequent two revisits to the same household.

Mode of data collection

Face-to-face [f2f]

Research instrument

The survey instruments included three separate questionnaires: 1) A household-level questionnaire; 2) An individual questionnaire that was administered to eligible young people; 3) A community-level questionnaire, which aimed at providing a profile of the localities in which young people live.

Response rate

A total of 16,061 young people were selected to be interviewed as part of this survey. Of this group, 15,029 young people were interviewed.

Sampling error estimates

SYPE estimates for sampling error estimation

Sampling errors along with other precision estimates have been calculated for several key survey estimates. The chosen estimates are labor-force participation rate; unemployment rate; employment

Abstract

In every society, young people carry the promise of a better future. They are the building blocks of a country’s economy and society and its most essential human resource. In Egypt, young people are not only its most important capital but they also constitute the largest segment of the population. According to the 2006 census, approximately 40% of Egyptians are between the ages of 10 and 29. With the right investments, this youth bulge will represent a demographic opportunity that will positively shape the country’s future. Once Egypt’s young people reach working age, given a relatively low proportion of older and younger non-working populations to support, they will present a “demographic gift” of low economic dependency. However, the large size of this cohort places enormous pressures on social services and the labor market and creates a major challenge for development planning. Failures in these institutions could result in the social and economic marginalization of a large proportion of youth that will be unable to compete in an increasingly globalized economy, hence turning the “gift” to demographic “burden”.

Effective planning relies on high-quality research. The Population Council seeks to build the evidence base for better policies and programs with the view of generating research that makes a difference. Young people have been a primary focus for the Council for decades, directing research to determine their conditions and contexts, and providing evidence for decision-makers. In 1998, the Population Council published Transitions to Adulthood, a comprehensive profile of youth based on the Council’s 1997 Adolescence and Social Change in Egypt (ASCE) survey. The results of ASCE have been an important resource for programming for adolescents in Egypt.

Responding to the dearth of data on youth in Egypt, the Population Council conducted a comprehensive situation analysis of Egyptian adolescents and young people: the Survey of Young People in Egypt (SYPE), which covers a nationally representative sample of 15,029 young people aged 10-29.

The SYPE collected data on the five key life transitions of education, work, family formation; health, and civic and political participation. SYPE follows up to an earlier survey conducted by the Population Council in 1997, The Adolescence and Social Change in Egypt (ASCE) survey. With focus on young people aged 10 to 19, analysis of ASCE identified tobacco use, female circumcision, anemia, growth stunting and delayed sexual maturation, poor management of menstruation, and underutilization of health insurance as six priority issues for youth in Egypt. SYPE updates the results provided by the earlier survey and expands their scope.

Geographic coverage

The SYPE sample is nationally representative, covering all governorates in Egypt, including the five Frontier governorates. The SYPE sample is considered to be an innovative design, because it allows for a priori inclusion of slum areas within the urban sample.

Analysis unit

1- Households. 2- Youth aged (10-29) years.

Universe

The survey covered a national sample of households and selected youth aged 10-29.

Kind of data

Sample survey data [ssd]

Sampling procedure

Sample Design

The sample of the Survey of Young People in Egypt 2009 (SYPE) was designed in such a way as to be representative at the national as well as regional levels. The sample size of approximately 17,000 young people between the ages of 10 and 29 was selected to provide estimates of key indicators related to adolescents and youth for the country as a whole and for four administrative regions (Urban governorates, Lower Egypt governorates, Upper Egypt governorates and the Frontier governorates), and, where relevant, for the urban and rural segments of these regions. These indicators include never enrollment rates, dropout rates, the incidence of child labor, and unemployment rates. Based on previous statistics about the incidence of young people in the relevant age and sex groups, we determined that a nationally-representative sample of 11,000 households would be sufficient. To obtain accurate estimates for the Frontier governorates, these governorates had to be oversampled. As a result, the SYPE is not a self-weighted sample and weights are needed to obtain the correct estimates.

Sample Frame

The SYPE sample was designed as a multi-stage stratified cluster sample. The primary sampling units (PSUs) were selected from a CAPMAS master sample. The master sample is a stratified cluster sample that contains 2,400 PSUs, divided into 1,080 urban and 1,320 rural PSUs. These PSUs are drawn from a frame of enumeration areas (EAs) covering the entire country prepared by CAPMAS from the 2006 Population Census. Each EA is drawn up in such a way as to contain roughly 1500 dwelling units. The sample is stratified into governorates and each governorate is further stratified into urban and rural segments, where relevant. The distribution of PSUs across strata in the master sample reflects the distribution of the population so as to produce a self-weighted sample.

To achieve a fairly wide geographic dispersion in the SYPE sample and thus minimize the design effect, we set the number of households per cluster to 25. To obtain these 25 households, 25 dwelling units were systematically selected from the roughly 1500 listed in each EA. To get the sample size we needed, we set the number of required PSUs to 455, for a total sample size of 11,375 households. The distribution of PSUs across governorates and urban and rural areas in both the master sample and the SYPE sample are shown in (Table 1 in Appendix C of the final report available among the external resources). The final sample of households interviewed was made up of 11,372 households, which yielded a total of 15,029 young people aged 10-29.

The PSU's in the SYPE sample were drawn from the EA's in the master sample at a rate of roughly 19%-20%. With the exception of the Frontier Governorates and the Luxor administrative area, the sampling rate varies in a relatively narrow range from 14% to 27%. To get good representation from the sparsely populated Frontier Governorates, we increased the sampling rate significantly, in some cases retaining all the PSU's in the master sample. Weights will be derived at the level of the administrative region to account for these varying sampling rates.

Selecting the Urban Slums Sub-Sample

One of the objectives of SYPE is to obtain separate estimates for young people living in urban slums (referred to in the final report chapters as informal urban areas). To make sure we had enough representation of urban slums, we used a study conducted by the Information and Decision Support Center of the Egyptian Cabinet of Ministers (IDSC) to classify urban PSU's in the CAPMAS master sample into slum and non-slum areas. Deciding how to allocate urban PSUs to slum and non-slum areas was not a straightforward exercise given the unreliability of the data on the population of the slum areas.

First, we had to make a decision on how to allocate the 212 urban PSUs to slum and non-slum PSUs. The most reasonable estimate of the share of slums in the urban population was close to 20%, leading us to allocate 44 of the 212 urban PSU's in the sample to slum areas. Second, we had to allocate these 44 slum PSUs to the various governorates. This allocation was done in such a way as to match as closely as possible, the distribution of the number of slum areas across governorates is shown in (Table 2 in Appendix C of the final report available among the external resources).

Ideally, we should have allocated slum PSUs across governorates according to each governorate's share of slum population rather than its share in the number of slum areas. However, given the unreliable information about the population of slum areas, it was impossible to do the allocation in terms of population. This allocation decision is likely to understate the true share of slums in governorates such as Cairo, Giza and Alexandria, where the size of slums is likely to be larger than average, and overstate slum populations in governorates like Damietta, Dakahlia and Sharkia where the size of slums is probably smaller than average. Without reliable data on slum populations, it is unfortunately not possible to use weights to correct for this possible bias in the geographic distribution of slums.

** More information on the sampling procedures is available in Appendix C in the English final report available among the external resources.

Sampling deviation

Attrition was due to the individual's rejection or unavailability during the data collectors' visit or their subsequent two revisits to the same household.

Mode of data collection

Face-to-face [f2f]

Research instrument

The survey instruments included three separate questionnaires: 1) A household-level questionnaire; 2) An individual questionnaire that was administered to eligible young people; 3) A community-level questionnaire, which aimed at providing a profile of the localities in which young people live.

Response rate

A total of 16,061 young people were selected to be interviewed as part of this survey. Of this group, 15,029 young people were interviewed.

Sampling error estimates

SYPE estimates for sampling error estimation

Sampling errors along with other precision estimates have been calculated for several key survey estimates. The chosen estimates are labor-force participation rate; unemployment rate; employment