In August 2025, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly ordered a comprehensive inventory and valuation of unused land overlooking the Nile Corniche, followed by a plan to offer it for investment. The government presents the initiative as a way to generate sustainable returns from public assets through professional management and private-sector partnerships. Urban planners, economists and parliamentarians interviewed by Zawia3 ask what it will mean for the public’s access to the river.
The cabinet reviewed an initial inventory covering Cairo districts including El Sahel, Rod El Farag, Bulaq Abu El Ela, West Cairo, Dar El Salam, El Maasara, Helwan and El Tebbin. The review considered sites, areas, the authorities responsible for each plot, approved plans and legal status, with a view to preparing investment opportunities.
Madbouly said urban development, tourism and service projects could increase the value of unused assets and strengthen public revenues. The initiative has revived the controversy over riverbank and river-formed land, known in Egyptian administration as tarh al-nahr.
Letters issued in 2024 by the Armed Forces Land Projects Agency called for the cancellation or non-renewal of usufruct arrangements along the Nile between Shubra and Helwan, according to earlier reporting. Facilities affected or identified in that reporting included a tourism and hotels faculty, the Floating Theatre, the water-police club, Umm Kulthum Park and other clubs. The letters described the sites as state property allocated for temporary use and demanded their evacuation.
On 20 September 2024, however, Water Resources and Irrigation Minister Hani Sewilam said cooperation with the military agency on licensing river-formed land between Shubra El Kheima and Helwan was continuing under the relevant legal conditions. He said coordination had also helped remove illegal infilling along that stretch.
A letter received by the Culture Ministry on 28 September 2024, numbered 14/527413, cancelled or declined to renew usufruct contracts within an area on Rawda Island designated for development of the Kasr Al Ainy hospitals. It included the Fatma Roshdy Floating Theatre, which belongs to the state’s Theatre House. Signed by Major General Mohamed Mostafa Radwan, it demanded that the theatre’s belongings be removed within a week and the land handed to a joint committee of the Irrigation Ministry and the military agency, with outstanding state dues paid through 30 September.
In October 2024, MP Doha Assi, a member of parliament’s culture, media and antiquities committee, submitted a parliamentary briefing request about removal of the theatre in Manial El Rawda. She also asked about the future of other venues, including Al Salam and the Metropole, and whether they were being prepared for sale or lease.
During August 2025, social-media users circulated photographs showing demolition of the Floating Theatre. Established in the 1960s, it was a prominent part of Egypt’s theatrical heritage, with a larger auditorium seating 480 and a smaller one seating 250. It had reopened following renovation in 2019.
Water Resources and Irrigation Law 147 of 2021 defines river-formed land and sets rules for the river’s protected corridor. The framework distinguishes the river’s regulatory boundaries and areas with approved building lines. The status of an individual plot and any proposed use therefore matter; riverside location alone does not explain the legal basis for every investment decision.
Riverside land offered for investment
Following the prime minister’s instructions, Minya’s investment department announced an opportunity involving an enclosed plot beside the Nile bridge at the entrance to the city’s Corniche. It described the site as suitable for sporting, leisure and commercial activities under a usufruct arrangement, intended to attract investors and generate a return.
The policy predates the latest inventory. On 6 April 2023, then-cabinet spokesperson Nader Saad announced that a number of Nile-facing assets in Cairo and Giza were being considered for investment. They included land and buildings belonging to government bodies connected with the move to the New Administrative Capital. Some assets had been transferred to the Sovereign Fund of Egypt, with expanding hotel capacity among the stated objectives.
Strategic planning and international marketing specialist Sally Salah describes the process as a sweeping redistribution of control over the Nile waterfront. In a Facebook post cited in this report, she argued that it goes beyond urban improvement to the offering of substantial stretches for investment, while comparing it with wider coastal development policies.
She claimed that powers previously exercised by the Irrigation Ministry had shifted towards military-linked bodies and the sovereign fund, and identified riverside areas including Rod El Farag, Bulaq Abu El Ela, Dar El Salam, Helwan and El Maasara. She also referred separately to coastal locations such as Ras El Hekma, Ras Shukeir and Ras Banas. These are her account of the broader policy, not evidence that every listed site is covered by the same Nile Corniche decision.
The monetary units require care. In remarks on 13 August 2025, Madbouly referred to land potentially worth tens of billions of Egyptian pounds. That should not be presented as an official valuation in tens of billions of dollars.
Salah criticised what she saw as an accelerated process of inventory, valuation and offering without sufficient public participation or a fully explained development vision. Restaurants, cafés, residential towers and hotels, she warned, could turn an open waterfront into a series of commercial spaces beyond many residents’ reach.
She also criticised the removal of greenery and riverside construction associated with projects such as Mamsha Ahl Misr. She said such changes obstruct views and described them as contrary to constitutional and legal protections. Her estimate of the length affected was not independently established in the material available for this report; her legal characterisation is a criticism, rather than a court finding.
Salah linked the policy to rising debt and questioned whether asset transactions, including the Ras El Hekma deal, had improved living standards or resolved financing pressures. She listed cultural and service facilities she considered at risk, among them the Floating Theatre, faculty and judges’ clubs, the tourism and hotels faculty and Umm Kulthum Park. Fatma Roshdy Theatre and the Floating Theatre refer here to the same venue.
Her central concern is that the Nile’s banks are being transformed from an accessible public space into a closed investment frontage, with cultural identity and everyday access subordinated to rapid financial returns.
The Armed Forces Land Projects Agency, established under Presidential Decree 531 of 1981, advertised riverside plots for a public auction on 20 March 2023 at its Nasr City headquarters. The listed locations included Zamalek Island, Maadi, Manial Island, Old Cairo, Tora, Dar El Salam, El Maasara and Imbaba. Suggested uses included floating tourist berths, restaurants and cafeterias.
An earlier advertisement published in December 2022 offered annual usufruct rights at sites including Zamalek, Agouza, Dokki, Garden City, Manial, Maadi, El Maasara, El Mounib, Imbaba and El Warraq. A usufruct arrangement grants use rights; it should not automatically be described as a transfer of ownership.
What is lost when public space closes?
Architect Yehia El Zeiny, founder of Diwan Al Memariyeen and a member of the Egyptian Society of Architects’ young architects committee, argues that riverbanks should first serve as public spaces for city residents. Parks, open recreation areas and public sports facilities, he says, are more appropriate than intensive property or tourism development.
He tells Zawia3 that restaurants, cafés and residential towers can strip the riverfront of its function as a natural space open to everyone. In his view, limited, lightweight facilities serving parks are acceptable; enclosing the banks as investment projects is not.
Roads alongside rivers should be local and low-speed, El Zeiny says. Large road expansions can separate a city from its natural resource, deepening residents’ isolation from the Nile rather than bringing it into everyday life.
He says public space in Egypt has contracted as parks have acquired fences and entrance charges. Residents already pay taxes that should help maintain these places, he argues. Charging them again risks undermining the principle of a public space that is open and free.
El Zeiny also criticises the expansion of private clubs and investment projects under usufruct arrangements. He sees a form of urban exclusivity in which rivers and beaches disappear behind club walls and cafés. Keeping the banks open, he argues, is a question of spatial justice rather than a missed short-term business opportunity.
Abbas El Zafarany, dean of Cairo University’s Faculty of Urban and Regional Planning, proposes a balance between investment and public access. He says his faculty prepared a plan for Greater Cairo’s Nile banks several years earlier that sought to keep at least 25% of the Corniche’s length available as open public space. This is a planning proposal, not a claim that the share is already guaranteed in practice.
Those spaces should be free, he tells Zawia3, with optional paid services such as cafés and restaurants. Access to the river must not become a privilege reserved for those who can afford it.
El Zafarany says commercial activities should not block views. In the stretches he describes, the street is three to five metres above the water, allowing low-rise services to be placed without cutting off the river visually. Obstructing views affects both pedestrians and residents who paid a premium for Nile-facing homes, he argues.
For investment on suitable sites, he favours hotels, followed by major office buildings, because of their continuing returns. He considers residential towers and compounds less advantageous when they generate a one-off sale receipt rather than recurring revenue.
He also calls for public gardens and greenery, which can improve the waterfront for residents and visitors while increasing its tourism appeal. Restaurants or cafés at ground level or within parks can support surrounding activities, he says, provided they do not eliminate free access.
“The Corniche must remain public property for everyone,” El Zafarany says, arguing that investment and an unobstructed view of the river should be planned together.
Balancing returns and rights
Alaa El Askary, professor of insurance and actuarial sciences at Al Azhar University, likewise argues that plans must balance investment with the public’s enjoyment of the Nile. The river is not just a source of water, he says, but a natural resource for recreation and visual enjoyment.
He considers limited charges potentially acceptable when tied to services or maintenance, but rejects them as a general rule. Entirely free areas should remain available, alongside optional paid facilities, as in the distinction between public and tourist beaches.
El Askary warns against reducing investment to cafés, restaurants, floating hotels and residential schemes. He considers an excessive focus on such activities an easy route to returns that does not necessarily build the productive economy.
His preferred model keeps the waterfront itself open while concentrating property and commercial activity on the inland side of the Corniche. He cites Alexandria’s relationship between its seafront and buildings on the opposite side as a planning reference.
He suggests looking beyond the river at other underused sites, including the edges of universities, ministries and public bodies. He points to commercial units around Zamalek Club as an example of recurring income. More broadly, he wants investment priorities to include industry, technology, education and skills, rather than relying primarily on consumption-oriented property development.
His argument is that productive, long-term investment can generate continuing public returns while preserving social rights to resources such as the Nile.
At the same time, the Egyptian Survey Authority announced that lists and maps identifying properties and assessed compensation for the Ring Road widening project in Cairo, from the Nile Corniche to the Autostrad, would be displayed from 1 to 30 September 2025.
The notice cites public-benefit Decision 4505 of 2022, published in the Official Gazette on 18 December 2022, and the expropriation framework under Law 10 of 1990 and its amendments. It concerns the project’s second phase in the Athar El Nabi area of Old Cairo, identified as road project 444. It is a notice about a specific road project, not proof that every riverside investment plot is being expropriated under that decision.
The unanswered transparency questions
MP Maha Abdel Nasser, deputy leader of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, says the central problem is the lack of transparency. Who will benefit from the land? Where will investment revenues go? How will they be used?
In October 2024, she submitted a parliamentary briefing request about the withdrawal of usufruct rights over state-owned riverbank land between Shubra and Helwan and the evacuation of facilities on it.
She tells Zawia3 that she had asked about sites near Kasr Al Ainy containing the tourism and hotels faculty and the Floating Theatre. The theatre had been removed, she says, but she had not received an official response about the faculty’s future. In her view, the absence of reliable information leaves residents uncertain about decisions already affecting their surroundings.
Abdel Nasser also raises concerns about expanding expropriation and compensation that is delayed or insufficient to buy replacement property. She says affected residents report being unable to secure alternatives with the amounts offered.
Asked whether the investment plan extends beyond Cairo, she says she has no confirmed information. That uncertainty, she argues, makes it difficult for the public to assess the proposals.
For her, the key issue is not which state body controls a plot, but how it is used. Investment should follow fair urban planning that protects the ability to see the Nile and walk along it, rather than repeat experiences in which commercial and tourist facilities have blocked access to the sea.
Abdel Nasser calls for clear plans that the public can examine and understand, with protection for common space rather than an assumption that every available site should become an enclosed investment project.
The government’s stated objective is to increase the value and returns of unused assets. The concern voiced by the interviewees is that, without transparent plans and enforceable access, the cost could be the loss of one of Egypt’s most important shared natural and cultural spaces. The unresolved questions concern not only revenue, but who can reach the river and who gets a say in its future.
