Big plans from what could be Egypt’s biggest education consortium: Private sector education outfit CIRA and privately owned investment company Elsewedy Capital Holding will build and run an EGP 2.5 bn private university in New Damietta through their joint venture Cairo Egypt for Education (CEE), according to a press release (pdf). The New Urban Communities Authority has allocated the JV a 58-feddan plot of land in New Damietta on which to build the facility.

CEE has big plans: CIRA and Elsewedy Capital Holding have said they want to, “create the largest platform created around private education in the country.” The two sides also plan to partner on other education projects, including in K-12 education.

The JV will open two new K-12 schools next month: CEE intends to roll out two “fully-owned” schools in West Cairo starting next month: Saxony International School (SIS) and British Columbia Canadian International School (BCCIS, in which CIRA owns a controlling stake. They will also open new branches of Regent School across new demographics, with “other educational projects in the pipeline.”

The yet-unnamed university is set to open its doors for students in the 2023-2024 academic year, when phase one of the project will be complete, the statement said. In total, the university will include 16 faculties and is poised to serve 25k students locally and regionally. “We believe that Egypt is more than Cairo and Alexandria, that’s why our focus will be directed to the underserved governorates that are in need of quality private sector education,” said Elsewedy Capital Holding CEO Haytham Sabry.

Also in CIRA’s pipeline: EGX-listed CIRA will open Egypt’s first applied tech university by the start of the 2022-2023 academic year, under an agreement signed in June with Saxony International School (SIS), a German private-sector education provider. The institute will launch at CIRA’s Badr University, before being rolled out to other locations around the country. The education outfit is also planning to invest up to EGP 500 mn to set up four language schools in Qena, New Assiut, New Rashid and El Alamein by 2022, CEO Mohamed El Kalla previously said.

What’s Elsewedy Capital Holding? The privately held company, described on its LinkedIn profile as the “family office” of Elsewedy Electric chief Ahmed Elsewedy, invests in real estate (Mangroovy), higher education (the Knowledge Hub in the new administrative capital), and non-bank financial services (Mada Ins, Easylease).