The population of Cairo is expected to double from 18 million in the next 40 years.

“Cairo isn’t suitable for the Egyptian people, there are traffic jams on every street, the infrastructure can’t support the population, and it’s very crowded," project spokesman Khaled El-Husseiny said.

Without any specific masterplan, it has started to become ugly … there’s no humanity."

The new capital will span 700 square kilometres making it almost the same size as Singapore.

The announcement for the new city was made at an Egyptian investment conference in Sharm el-Sheikh.

It attracted US$12 billion ($16.1bn) worth of pledges from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

Chinese banks will provide 85 per cent of the funding towards the $3 billion skyscraper portion of the new capital, which is being developed by the China State Construction Engineering Corporation.

The CSCEC finalised the deal to build a massive Central Business District for the new administrative capital in October last year.