It is her first visit to Egypt in a decade. Human Rights Watch last week described Merkel's visit as part of a European effort to "externalize responsibility for migrants and asylum seekers." It was not clear if Merkel would raise concerns about human rights in Egypt, where the government has waged a wide-scale crackdown on dissent since the military overthrew an elected Islamist president in 2013. She attended the inauguration of a Siemens megaproject to build three new power plants in Egypt. Siemens signed an 8 billion euro deal with Cairo two years ago that aims to boost Egypt's power generation capacity by around 50 percent by May 2018.

Source: Egypt Independent March 02, 2017 16:02 UTC