President Abdel Fattah El Sisi’s call-in to Kol Youm’s Amr Adib was the highlight of the night on the airwaves. The call centered mostly around the rehabilitation and development of Egypt’s most impoverished neighborhoods and villages (watch, runtime 7:18).

El Sisi said that the government plans to complete work on 180k residential units by 30 June next year to relocate the citizens of these areas, where infrastructure is severely underdeveloped and population density is significantly above average. El Sisi also urged banks to also include these types of development initiatives to their CSR programs. The administration is also starting to take steps to keep population growth in check, the president said (watch, runtime: 16:35).

Adib also spoke to the head of the Armed Forces’ Engineering Authority Kamil El Wazir, who told the host that he allocated EGP 1 bn to 78 of Egypt’s neediest villages, mainly for work on infrastructure development (watch, runtime 11:47).

On Hona Al Asema, Lamees Al Hadidi spoke to Egypt’s ambassador to Germany, Badr Abdel Aaty, about the German government launching an investigation into the death of 22-year-old Egyptian student Shaden Mohamed El Gohary in a car accident. There are persistent reports that the woman’s death not an accident, but a hate crime (watch, runtime 11:53).

The ‘citizenship-for-sale’ debate will erupt in 5, 4, 3… Lamees then moved on to discuss draft legislation before the House suggesting that residents who have been in the country for more than five years could obtain Egyptian citizenship in return for making a substantial deposit an Egyptian bank. MP Alaa Abdel Moneim phoned in to discuss his concerns about the proposed law, which he said would compromise the notion of Egyptian identity (watch, runtime 4:33).

Over on Al Hayah Al Youm, Deputy Finance Mohamed Maait told host Lobna Asal that the country has already survived the most challenging parts of the economic reform program. He added as well that GDP growth ideally needs to stand somewhere between 7-8% if Egypt’s population growth remain at 2.6% (watch, runtime: 538).