With the Mediterranean as a backdrop and the continent’s flags lined up along the seafront, El-Alamein, known until now for its 1942 battle, spent three days playing the part of an African capital. From 2 to 4 October, more than twenty heads of state and government gathered there, joined by bankers, business leaders and representatives of development institutions.
The first event in the sequence, the Alamein Africa Forum, set out to boost trade between African countries. The starting point is sobering, since that trade was worth only 192 billion dollars in 2023, or about 15% of the continent’s total. Cairo, whose investments in Africa come to roughly 14 billion dollars across construction, energy, pharmaceuticals and logistics, hopes to turn the forum into a biennial event held under the auspices of the African Union.
On 4 October, the AU’s 8th Mid-Year Coordination Meeting opened under the chairmanship of Abdel Fattah El Sisi. It is designed as a framework for exchanges between the organisation and the regional communities on the continent’s priorities. On the sidelines, the five founding countries of NEPAD (Algeria, South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria and Senegal) held an extraordinary summit that ended with an Alamein Declaration. According to Seneweb, the text sets deadlines: an investment platform before the AU summit of February 2027, then a facility for small and medium-sized enterprises by mid-2027.
Senegalese President Bassirou Diomaye Faye used the trip to make the case for West African integration and to hold a string of business meetings. Egyptian companies presented him with projects in renewable energy, banking, health and aviation, including the resumption of a Cairo to Dakar air link.
But economics did not hold the whole stage. On the same day, according to The National, Sisi received Sudan’s General Abdel Fattah Al Burhan, Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and Eritrea’s Isaias Afwerki. The four men intend to broaden their military cooperation in order, according to a source quoted by the newspaper, to protect the region and secure shipping in the Red Sea.
Ethiopia was not at the table, and for good reason. A week earlier, diplomats were expelled on both sides. Addis Ababa accuses its neighbours of backing a rebellion led by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, which they deny. On top of that comes the dispute, more than ten years old, over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which Egypt sees as a threat to its supply of Nile water.
El-Alamein thus served two ambitions at once. One belongs to a country that wants to become an economic crossroads for the continent again, the other to a power counting its allies. Which of the two will weigh more heavily in the coming months remains to be seen.