Geography of Egypt

(Compiled by the Social Research Center, The American University in Cairo)

Egypt occupies a strategic location on the African continent. It extends from the Mediterranean Sea in the north to Sudan in the south, and from the Red Sea in the east to Libyan Arab Jamahiriya in the west.

Even though the total surface area is about one million square kilometers, less than 5% of the land is inhabited.

For a larger view, click on the image.
Egypt is divided geographically into three regions, which are further divided into 28 administrative governorates.
These regions are:
The Northern Region: Lower Egypt, the Nile Delta
The Southern Region: Upper Egypt, the Nile Valley
The Frontier Areas

 

According to the 1996 census, nearly 43% of the total urban population lived in Cairo (the Capital) and Alexandria. Cairo the largest city in Africa, has a population of 6.790 million.

The total population in 1996 was 59,272,382 million, including an estimated 2.2 million residing abroad. The population is growing at the rate of one million every eight months, which would give Egypt a population of more than 68 million by the turn of the century. According to the latest estimation conducted by EDHR, Egypt’s population reached nearly 65335.6 hundreds in 2001.  (Egypt Human Development Report 2003)