Sisi hosts Africa at Alamein this weekend and opens a national grievance portal for October

Sisi opened the inaugural Alamein Africa Business Forum on Saturday 3 October and, with Angolan President João Lourenço — who chairs the AUDA-NEPAD Heads of State and Government Orientation Committee — co-chaired a summit of the agency’s founding member states. Today he hosts the 8th African Union Mid-Year Coordination Meeting in New Alamein, delivering both opening and closing remarks, an agenda announced on 2 October by presidency spokesman Ambassador Mohamed El-Shennawy. EgyptToday reported a bilateral with Aliko Dangote on energy, fertilisers and chemicals; Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty attended the launch of an Egypt–South Africa Business Council on Friday. Everything in the file is announcement-level: no outcomes, no agreements, no figures confirmed. Whether an Ethiopian delegation is in the room, and at what level, has not been established.

At home, Sisi announced on Thursday 1 October the preparatory sessions and official website for “Egypt Forum 2026,” to run 19–24 October at the St Regis hotel in the New Administrative Capital. The Cabinet launched EgyptForum.gov.eg as an interactive platform for citizens and experts to submit views. “I invite all state institutions, experts and Egyptians from all backgrounds and perspectives to register on the forum’s website, share their views and submit their proposals,” Sisi wrote, in EgyptToday’s English rendering of his Arabic post. The initiative dates to late August, when he instructed the government at an Al-Mawlid Al-Nabawi ceremony to compile a public report on efforts made, funds spent and results achieved. Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly told the Cabinet on 30 September that preparations had begun, promising “broad dialogue with specialists, experts and opinion leaders.”

Assessment: The two events are the same instrument pointed in different directions. Alamein buys continental standing at the moment Egypt most needs African goodwill on the Nile file — and the complete absence of GERD reporting this week, while Cairo hosts the continent, is conspicuous rather than reassuring. The October forum solicits grievance through a state portal and routes it into a six-day accounting of state achievements, with the government setting the terms of both the complaint and the answer. Exercises of this scale are usually scheduled against something: an IMF programme winding down, a subsidy decision, an electoral calendar. The calendar is the thing to establish before reading the forum’s purpose.