French President Emmanuel Macron arrived tonight for a 48-hour visit to Egypt, which will largely be dedicated to the war in the Gaza Strip, Agence France-Presse reported, quoted by BTA.
It is planned that immediately after landing his plane in the capital Cairo, Macron will make a private visit to the Grand Egyptian Museum, which is scheduled to be officially opened on July 3 - more than two decades after the project was announced.
Tomorrow morning, the French president will hold bilateral talks with his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, before Jordan's King Abdullah II joins them at noon for a trilateral summit.
The main topic of the will be the war in the Gaza Strip, given the fact that Egypt and Jordan are among the leading partners in resolving the conflict, the French presidency noted in a communiqué.
This visit will also be an opportunity to elevate Franco-Egyptian relations to the rank of "strategic partnership". Agreements are planned to be signed tomorrow in the fields of transport, energy transition, healthcare and even university cooperation, the Elysee Palace also indicated.
In the afternoon, Macron and El Sisi will close a French-Egyptian business forum, after which they will visit the Cairo metro, whose operator is the French company RATP.
The day after tomorrow, the French president will visit the Egyptian city of El Arish, in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, which is located 50 kilometers from the "Rafah" checkpoint on the border with the Gaza Strip.
Egypt's population has reached 107.5 million, after increasing by half a million in 154 days, the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics announced today, as quoted by the newspaper "Al Ahram" and BTA.
The data show that the rate of growth has slowed. The increase from 106 million to 107 million took 268 days, while previous increases of one million occurred on average in between 245 and 250 days.
Last year, Egypt's birth rate fell below two million newborns per year for the first time since 2007. Last year, an average of 164,028 births were recorded per month, which is 5,378 births per day, 224 per hour, 3.73 per minute, or one birth every 16 seconds.
A high birth rate is one of the most serious challenges facing Egypt, which is the fourteenth most populous country in the world. In recent years, the government has launched several campaigns to limit the growth and address overpopulation, including through free distribution of contraceptives and financial incentives for family planning. The goal is to reduce the average number of children born to a woman to 1.6.