Egypt sees a drop in birth rates

Last year in Egypt, there were 164,028 newborns in the country each month, 5,378 daily, 224 per hour, 3.73 per minute, and one every 16 seconds, The New Arab reported on February 13th.

Despite the figures, for the first time in 17 years, Egypt has seen its number of newborns registered across the country fall to under two million, according to the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statics (CAPMAS), the research wing of the Egyptian government. The CAPMAS also said that there were 1.96 million Egyptians born in this year, a 3.8% drop from the 2023 figures.

A new report, which analysed the number of births per 1000 people from 1950 to 2025, found that Egypt has seen a decline in its birth rate for the past five years.

In 2022, the country’s birth rate declined by 2.34% since 2021. Between 2022 and 2023, births dropped by 2.4%. By 2024, the number fell by 1.61% since the previous year. Between 2024 and 2025, Egypt’s birth rate fell again, this time by 1.64%.

The Egyptian government has celebrated the ongoing decline, saying that it proves the country’s new family planning programmes and campaigns are successful. The new figures represent Egypt’s lowest birth rate ever recorded since 2007.

“Egyptians have started to realise the importance of regulating the growth of the population,” Prime Minister Moustafa Madbouli said on February 5th, attributing the drop to the efforts made by the government for family planning and the dissemination of knowledge about the value of restricting family sizes.

The nations population started to grow rapidly after the 1970s. Egypt has prioritised reducing the number of births and gaining control over its population growth.  Home to a huge 117.6 million people, including over nine million refugees, Egypt is listed as Africa’s third most populous country after Nigeria and Ethiopia.

Dr Hossam Abdelghaffar, the official spokesman of the Ministry of Health and Population, told The New Arab that the country’s “campaigns are starting to show positive results that can be seen in figures about new births.”

“Our family planning campaigns aim to strike a balance between population growth and the growth of the economy,” he added.

The New Arab, MacroTrends