Egypt's FM tells African leaders Egypt will back bankable infrastructure projects under PICI

CAIRO - 30 JANUARY 2026: Egypt’s Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty joined a high-level virtual meeting of the Presidential Infrastructure Championing Initiative (PICI) on Friday, chaired by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and attended by a number of African heads of state and senior officials, alongside the CEO of the African Union Development Agency, AUDA-NEPAD.

Opening his remarks, Abdelatty conveyed greetings from President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and voiced Egypt’s appreciation for Ramaphosa’s leadership of the initiative, while praising AUDA-NEPAD and the PICI secretariat for work aimed at accelerating continental infrastructure and deeper African integration.

Closing Africa’s infrastructure gap
 

Abdelatty said persistent gaps in transport, energy and digital connectivity continue to weigh on sustainable development, intra-African trade and industrialization, arguing that PICI offers a practical framework that can translate political commitment into implementable projects.

He also said Egypt, with El-Sisi chairing the AUDA-NEPAD Heads of State and Government Orientation Committee, is prioritizing efforts to narrow Africa’s infrastructure financing gap by mobilizing investment, strengthening project bankability, and building partnerships with regional and international financial institutions.

Proposal to explore an African development fund
 

Among the proposals highlighted, Abdelatty pointed to ongoing work to study the feasibility of an African development fund as a potential additional mechanism to support priority projects, alongside bilateral capacity-building through Egyptian and AUDA-NEPAD channels.

VIC-MED corridor in focus
 

Abdelatty also underlined Egypt’s role within PICI through its championing of the VIC-MED corridor, a long-discussed plan to connect Lake Victoria to the Mediterranean via the Nile basin to facilitate lower-cost movement of goods and people and support regional economic integration.

He said Egypt is ready to share accumulated expertise and that Egyptian companies are positioned to support African infrastructure delivery, citing what he described as Egypt’s heavy infrastructure investment over the past decade.

PICI, hosted under AUDA-NEPAD, is designed to have African heads of state politically champion cross-border infrastructure projects by helping unlock bottlenecks and mobilize resources.