Egypt's environment ministry runs the ambient air-quality monitoring network for Greater Cairo, meaning the governorates of Cairo, Giza and Qalyubia together — a national body acting across an area the atlas city is part of, not a city-run system. Since September 2020 a US$200 million World Bank loan has paid to upgrade that layer: additional monitors, a forecasting system, and a graded response plan for the autumn black cloud season, when rice-straw burning thickens the air over the city. What the readings do not yet do is set anything off. The response plan drafted under the loan was still awaiting Cabinet approval in January 2026, and this review found no public real-time feed from the ministry, whose own air-quality pages returned 404 in July 2026; the live picture on the open web comes from commercial platforms and a US Embassy monitor. A World Bank blog in April 2026 describes the plan in the present tense, as already switching measures on automatically. Egyptian government reporting three months earlier did not. Progress has been uneven: the Bank rated implementation moderately unsatisfactory in April 2025.
The World Bank reports 34 continuous monitoring stations in Greater Cairo and PM10 falling from 128 µg/m³ in 2020 to 88 µg/m³ in 2025; an Egyptian government report relayed by Youm7 in January 2026 gives the same trend as 118 to 89 µg/m³. The two accounts do not agree, and both come from the parties running the programme. That government report counts 121 monitoring stations nationwide. The World Bank's own supervision report of 6 April 2025 rated implementation progress moderately unsatisfactory and recorded 0 of 12 targeted short-lived-climate-pollutant and greenhouse-gas monitors installed, against a target of 12 by December 2026.
🎓 Lesson
Instruments are the cheap half. Greater Cairo has the stations and a drafted threshold ladder; what it does not yet have is a Cabinet decision making a reading legally consequential, or a public feed letting anyone outside the ministry check the reading at all.
Evidence🏛️ Official
Scale🗺️ Regional
CostUS$200M (IBRD loan, whole project including waste and bus components)
FundingWorld Bank IBRD loan to the Government of Egypt
Sources
↗ World Bank press release, 30 Sep 2020 (funder)Fetched. Confirms Board approval 30 September 2020 and the US$200 million size, and that component one is to modernise Egypt's air quality management system for Greater Cairo. The same loan also funds solid waste facilities and electric-bus pilots; those components are deliberately outside this entry.
↗ World Bank Project Information Document, P172548 (funder)Fetched (after a redirect from the /text/ path). Defines Greater Cairo as the Cairo, Giza and Qualioubya governorates — the basis for the regional scale — and describes component one as strengthening monitoring infrastructure, forecasting systems, emergency response plans and public awareness, i.e. an upgrade to something already there.
↗ World Bank Implementation Status Report, 6 Apr 2025 (funder self-assessment)Fetched as text; the PDF version of the same document is unreadable to automated fetching. Source for the moderately unsatisfactory implementation rating, the 0-of-12 monitor count as of 6 February 2025 against a December 2026 target, the indicator 'Institutional Air Quality response mechanism established and operational' not yet met, and the Graded Response Action Plan being in advanced preparation rather than in force.
↗ World Bank blog, Guimbert and Sarraf, 22 Apr 2026 (funder)Fetched. The sole source for '34 continuous air quality monitoring stations in Greater Cairo' and for PM10 falling from 128 µg/m³ in 2020 to 88 µg/m³ in 2025. Also the source that describes the graded response plan in the present tense as automatically activating measures up to temporary school closures, and that lists the forecasting system as a future introduction. Written by the World Bank about its own loan.
↗ Youm7, 12 Jan 2026 (press, on a government report)Fetched. The counterweight to the World Bank blog: as of 12 January 2026 the graded response plan was still pending Cabinet approval. Also gives 121 ministry monitoring stations nationwide, the intention to extend forecasting beyond 48 hours, and the government's own PM10 figures of 118 in 2020 to 89 in 2025, which do not match the Bank's.
↗ Masrawy, 5 Aug 2025 (press)Fetched. The ministry's plan for the 2025-26 black cloud season: real-time stations, satellite detection of burning hotspots, a cross-ministry operations room and penalties under Law 202 of 2020. Notably it describes no numeric threshold ladder and no published air-quality index, which is why this entry claims neither.
↗ Ministry of Environment / EEAA air-quality page (operator)Fetch attempted 26 July 2026 and returned the ministry's own 404 page ('Sorry! Page / Document not found or relocated'); its EIMP project-studies page 404s likewise. Cited as the evidence behind the entry's statement that no public ministry feed could be found — an absence, not a proof of concealment.
📎 Cite this project
1001 Smart Cities (2026). “Greater Cairo Air-Quality Monitoring Network Upgrade” — Cairo, Egypt. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/cairo-air-quality-program/ (last verified 2026-07-26). Data: CC BY 4.0.
The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.
