Happy Thursday to you all, wonderful people. We have a nice, tight little issue for you this morning as the first full workweek of the new year eases to a close.

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The big story this morning: We’ve just been hit by another Trump immigration clampdown. We’re one of 75 countries from which applications to immigrate to the US will not be processed, though it seems visitor visas are still moving through the system — for now.

In more positive news: A plan to boost our sales of electricity to Libya is the latest in our push to become the premier energy hub in the Eastern Mediterranean, we exclusively report. The news comes just as we’re about to start testing a wider connection to the Saudi grid — and after we lined up natural gas sales to Lebanon and Syria.

MEANWHILE- The Finance Ministry is heading back to global debt markets with a Eurobond issuance that it hopes could raise as much as USD 2 bn and lock in financing at a much more attractive price than at any time in the past few years. And you can reassure your teen: Policymakers are not mulling an Aussie-style social media ban. Both stories are exclusives you’ll read only in EnterpriseAM.

AND- Goodbye, Afcon dream: The Pharaohs’ pursuit of an eighth Afcon title came to an end last night after a 1-0 defeat to Senegal in the semi-finals. Egypt will face Nigeria on Saturday for the bronze. Senegal is now set to face host nation Morocco — who beat Nigeria in a 4-2 penalty shootout — in the final this Sunday.

WEATHER- Cairo is in for another foggy morning and a high of 19°C today. You can expect to see an overnight low of 12°C, according to our favorite weather app.

Watch this space

MARKETING — The NTRA is taking premium short codes to the auction block. Starting Monday, 26 January, the National Telecom Regulatory Authority will launch an auction platform to sell three-, five-, and six-digit numbers, moving away from administrative allocation and toward a transparent price-discovery model, the authority announced at a presser attended by EnterpriseAM.

Opening bids for top-tier numbers will range from EGP 220k to EGP 320k, while six-digit numbers aimed at SMEs will start from EGP 80k.

Do you want to bid? You’ll need to pay a 10% deposit by 21 January.

Mobile phone numbers could be next: The NTRA is mulling whether to extend the auction model to individual mobile numbers, a move that would formalize the grey market for VIP phone numbers that currently exists on platforms such as Dubizzle.

It’s smart policy: The Madbouly government has for more than three years now been on a drive to both “digitize all the things” and wring maximum revenue out of anything with a market value. All the better that they’re doing so transparently in this case.

ENERGY — The government is in talks to increase Israeli gas imports by some 150k cf / d in February, a government source tells EnterpriseAM. The addition would bring our total imports of Israeli gas to 1.15-1.25 bcf / d. The additional volume would flow despite the ongoing standoff between the two governments over the “Israel first” clauses added to the USD 35 bn gas agreement.

We could hear more about the supply bump and the gas agreement soon with officials from Israel reportedly in Cairo this week to try to work out the gas agreement.

NBFIs — The Financial Regulatory Authority issued a final warning to every company it regulates: You have until 31 March 2026 to file your share registries with Misr Central Clearing, Depository and Registry (MCDR). Failure to comply will result in the suspension of all regulatory services, the authority said in a circular(pdf). The requirement for companies to deposit shares centrally was technically introduced in 2018.

This move is designed to digitize ownership structures across the non-bank sector. By forcing shares into MCDR, the regulator ensures a single source of truth for ownership, making it harder to obscure shareholding structures and easier for the FRA to monitor capital flows and governance.

Morning must read

How do you build a resilient banking system? That’s the question CIB CEO Hisham Ezz Al Arab tackles in a piece written for the World Economic Forum ahead of its annual meeting next week, which runs Monday through Friday next week (19-23 January). Hisham emphasizes that “the resilience of a country is inseparable from the resilience of its banking system,” highlighting the importance of shockproofing the financial sector.

Who’s going to Davos? About 3k business leaders, senior government officials, and leaders of civil society, including about 65 world leaders.

US President Donald Trump is going, signaling that WEF is back after a season (or three) in the wilderness. He’s bringing along the largest-ever US delegation with five cabinet secretaries slated to join him. On the corporate side, the 65 heads of state / government leaders and 850 CEOs who swiped right on their invites is also a record, organizers claim.

Other world leaders attending: Canadian PM Mark Carney (fresh off stops in China and Qatar), Qatari PM Mohamed Al Thani, and Syria’s Ahmed Al Sharaa are all on the list of confirmed attendees. There’s no word this morning if President Abdel Fattah El Sisi will be attending.

From the C-suite: Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, newly appointed Meta vice-chair Dina Powell McCormick, and Palantir’s Alex Karp are on the tech-heavy list of business leaders slated to be there.

Tap or click herefor the primer on who else is going and how you can follow along, if you’re so inclined.

Smart policy

A new mobile app aims to do what decades of administrative reforms haven’t: Force 12 ministries to coordinate in real time to help businesses and investors navigate the bureaucracy. The newly launched Investor Support mobile app (Android | iOS, currently in Arabic only) will act as a centralized tracking system for the Ministerial Group for Industrial Development. By hard-linking the app to 12 ministries — including finance, investment, electricity, and oil — alongside the Central Bank of Egypt, the Industry Ministry aims to create a single point of contact for complex issues that usually require an investor to navigate multiple agencies at the same time.

Why it matters: See this in the same light as the NTRA’s public short-number auction system — part of a drive to digitize all the things. The first big push came with taxes and e-invoices. Investment and Foreign Trade Minister Hassan El Khatib told us on stage at last fall’s EnterpriseAM Egypt Forum that his goal was to digitalize every service a business or investor would need to set up shop or run a business in the country.

Data point

USD 614 mn — the total value of funding raised by Egyptian startups in 2025, according to data from Africa: The Big Deal. This puts Egypt in second place on the continent with a 20% share of total funding, behind only Kenya’s increasingly lively startup scene, which raked in USD 985 mn.

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The big story abroad

We’re getting déjà vu with all of the new tariff announcements coming our way from the US — as if a halt to visa processing wasn’t enough for one morning.

The latest — following the threat of a 25% tariff on Iran’s “business partners” earlier this week — is a 25% tariff on the sale of AI chips to China. Included on the list are Nvidia’s H200 and a similar chip from AMD, which rely heavily on TSMC for manufacturing before they’re imported into the US and transshipped elsewhere. US President Donald Trump described it as getting a 25% “cut” of the sale of the chips to China, after the government reversed a policy prohibiting the export of chips to the country last year.

^^The must-read on the topic: White House sets tariffs to take 25% cut of Nvidia and AMDsales in China

Meanwhile, US banks are reeling from Trump’s call for a 10% cap on credit card interest rates, with executives from Citigroup and JP Morgan saying it could be detrimental to the economy.

PLUS- OpenAI is continuing its diversification drive, saying it will source chips from AI startup Cerebras in a USD 10 bn multi-year agreement. It earlier lined up supply from AMD and Broadcom earlier. Also: Luxury retailer Saks has now filed for bankruptcy after finalizing a USD 1.75 bn financing package to keep its stores open.

IN IRAN- The US has pulled some of its personnel from its bases in the Middle East after Tehran threatened to retaliate if the US strikes Iran. More than 2k people are believed to have been killed by security forces amid ongoing anti-regime protests there.

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