The new tourist image of Egypt’s Valley of the Pyramids, Africa’s first floating wind power station, a cross-border passenger cable car from Russia to China.
In early July 2025, a large-scale renovation of the tourist infrastructure was completed in the suburbs of Cairo, near the Giza pyramid complex. The project took seven years to complete and cost approximately USD 30 million. It was a result of public-private partnership, the funding being provided by the business structure of Naguib Sawiris, one of Egypt’s wealthiest businessmen.
The transformation focused on organizing the chaotic traffic and streamlining tourist flows within the pyramid area. Private vehicles are no longer allowed to enter the site, while visitors travel between pyramids on tour buses. Waiting under the scorching sun has been made more comfortable by new amenities such as cafés, restaurants, souvenir shops, and toilets.
The authorities have also promised to address the problems posed by aggressive street vendors and camel ride organizers, whose ruse behaviour often triggers complaints. Their presence will be minimized and restricted to specific zones.
Coupled with the opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza (the world’s biggest collection of Ancient Egyptian artifacts officially opened its doors in early July), the authorities expect a doubling of tourist numbers over the next ten years to an annual 30 million. This could place Egypt among the most visited countries in the world, according to Bloomberg forecasts.
Morocco plans to adopt a novel electricity generation method. In July, the country announced it was building, off the coast of Essaouira, a floating wind power plant, the first of its kind in Africa and fifth worldwide. The planned capacity of this facility is 1 GW, equivalent to that of an average nuclear reactor.
The Atlantic coastline was chosen because it experiences strong winds of up to 11 metres a second, explains African Business Magazine. The purpose of the power plant is to help Morocco achieve its target of generating 52% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030. Construction is scheduled to begin in 2029.
A year-round cable car spanning 926 metres is expected to be completed later this year. Once operational, it will enable travel from Russia’s Blagoveshchensk to China’s Heihe in just 2.5 minutes. The cable car has a capacity of 6.8 thousand people a day in each direction or 2.5 million people annually in both directions. In the summer of 2025, construction workers began installing cables weighing 30 tonnes each across the Amur River at a height of 70 metres. These cables must support cabins carrying up to 110 passengers, a record for Russia in terms of passenger capacity. The installation is scheduled for completion in October 2025, with the passenger terminal construction set to finish by the end of 2025. The terminal will include not only the cable car station and platform but also border control facilities.
