Foreign Affairs Office of Beijing Municipal Government

[Overview] Cairo is the capital and political, economic, cultural and transportation center of the Arab Republic of Egypt. Located in the northeast of the country, Cairo Governorate covers an area of 3,085 square kilometers and has a population of about 22.8 million.

[Politics] The incumbent governor of Cairo Khaled Abdel Aal came into office in August 2018.

[Economy] Cairo Governorate is the industrial and agricultural center of Egypt. Helwan, a city located in the south of Cairo, is the country's largest iron and steel hub, while the famous Nile Delta in the north mainly produces such crops as cotton, rice, corn and wheat, as well as beans, sugarcane, fruits and onion.

[Culture and Education] Cairo is well known for its abundant cultural legacy. It is reputed as the “city of a thousand minarets” for the numerous minarets found across the city. It is home to various regular and vocational schools, of which the Cairo University, Ain Shams University and Al-Azhar University are renowned worldwide.

[Relations with Beijing] Beijing and Cairo established the sister-city relationship on October 28, 1990. The two sides have maintained sound official ties in recent years and worked closely together in such areas as investment and trade, urban management, and public facilities.

Investment and Trade: In March 2005, a Beijing-based biomedicine company and a medicine and medical equipment company under Egypt's Ahram Newspaper signed at the Ahram headquarters an agreement on launching in the Egyptian market Paclitaxel and Ftibamzone, two anti-tumor and anti-virus drugs based on biomedicine technology.

In 2018, Foton Motor Group and a company under Egypt's Ministry of Military Production declared interests in cooperative projects including a joint venture producing electric buses. They signed a memorandum for this purpose, pushing their business cooperation into a new stage. In 2019, the IMUT company under Egypt's Ministry of Military Production signed the joint venture framework agreement with Foton during the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation.

In October 2019, Beijing held a series of cultural exchange events in Cairo themed on “Experiencing Beijing”. These included a fair that displayed Beijing's high-quality cultural and creative products, business matchmaking and other activities that promoted key cultural enterprises and projects from Beijing, facilitated dialogue between Beijing and Cairo's cultural enterprises and explored channels of cooperation. The Beijing Cultural and Creativity Industry Service Company and Egypt's Galaxy Group signed an MOU on-site.

Urban Management and Public Facilities: In March 1998, a construction team flew from Beijing to Cairo, where they spent a month building the China Garden in the Cairo International Park, a symbol of friendship between Beijing and Cairo.

Culture and Education: In 2018, representatives of Beijing and Cairo Governorate held in-depth discussions about better aligning their development strategies as sister cities and expanding educational collaboration under the Belt and Road framework. They also visited the Confucius Institute at Cairo University to learn about the setup of Chinese language courses and teaching activities, which provided valuable information for further cooperation in such areas as culture and education.