Egypt wants international companies to help it reclaim a 500k-acre area in the Western Desert as part of the Toshka Project, Al Mal reports. Sources tell the newspaper that the government is deciding which area it wants to cultivate and working out the costs of the project before officially announcing it to investors. It is also in the process of digging a new canal in the area, which will allow the reclamation of more land. Since its launch in 1997, the Toshka project has so far reclaimed over 30.5k acres of land out of the planned 540k acres in the Western Desert.

Other things we’re keeping an eye on this morning:

• Ikea opened its full-scale store at Marakez’s Mall of Arabia yesterday, after the Swedish furniture retailer had opened another, smaller branch at the mall until the full store opened.
• Samsung signed the contracts to set up a USD 30 mn factory in Beni Suef to manufacture educational tablets for public school students in Egypt.
• AirCairo and Turkish-German airline SunExpress are running 30 weekly flights between Hurghada and 14 German, Swiss, and Austrian airports as of May.