President Abdel Fattah El Sisi’s inauguration of national projects in Damietta yesterday was the talk of the town on the airwaves last night.

Tallying the projects: The largest of the national projects was the 330 feddan Damietta Furniture City (DFC), says Masaa DMC’s Ramy Radwan. DFC is expected to include 150 furniture factories, some 1500 smaller workshops, exposition halls, banks, hotels and other facilities. Other projects include a multi-purpose cargo facility in Damietta Port, the 5-star Hotel El Lessan by Steigenberger, a civic education center, an electricity plan in western Damietta, expansions to a sewage treatment plant in Ras El Bar, and a number of social housing projects. Hona Al Asema’s Reham Ibrahim (watch, runtime: 3:28) and Yahduth Fi Misr’s Sherif Amer (watch, runtime: 3:13) also took note of the inaugurations.

The three 14.4 GW plants built by Siemens, Orascom Construction, and Elsewedy Electric will save Egypt EGP 12 bn a year, Electricity Minister Mohamed Shaker said during the inauguration ceremony (watch, runtime: 48:33). The plants saved the country EGP 7.3 bn in FY2018-2019, and this figure will rise to EGP 12 bn in 2022 and EGP 16 bn when they reach full capacity, meaning that the project will recover its costs within 5-7 years, Shaker said. El Sisi also noted that the government has spent EGP 615 bn to improve the country’s electricity generation capacity (watch, runtime: 5:42).

Other topics that made it to the airwaves last night include:

• CBC’s Hona Al Asema (originally hosted by Lamees Al Hadidi) will officially stop airing this week, and Reham Ibrahim and Amr Khalil will begin hosting a new program, Min Masr, which first airs on Saturday at 11 pm CLT. According to Ibrahim, the new show is one with a “wider scope” (watch, runtime: 3:22).
• When are we getting a Senate again? Hona Al Asema’s Reham Ibrahim sat down with Ahmed Maklad, a member of a union of youth politicians, for a talk on a draft law to regulate the newly-reconstituted Senate, the recent surge in the number of youth governors, and other related topics (watch, runtime: 13:34). We should be heading to the polls to elect Senate members next year.
• Egypt’s first robotics company: Masaa DMC’s Ramy Radwan, meanwhile, had a chat with the founder of Egypt’s first company producing industrial robots, David Samir (watch, runtime: 3:05). The name of the company, which began as an AI startup in 2007, was left unsaid.
• Egypt’s tourism industry continues to attract praise: Radwan took note of a report by the Independent’s travel desk suggesting that Egypt will be one of the world’s top tourism destinations next year (watch, runtime: 2:23).