Samih Sawiris

Samih Sawiris was born in Cairo, Egypt, in 1957 into the Sawiris family, already prominent in Egyptian construction and telecoms through Orascom, the group his father Onsi had built. He trained in business and engineering in Germany before returning to work within the family's construction arm.

In 1989 he began developing a tract of undeveloped desert coastline on the Red Sea, near Hurghada, that had no fresh water source, no roads and no existing settlement. Engineers he consulted doubted the site could sustain a permanent population at all. He financed extensive desalination and water infrastructure, built roads and a marina system of lagoons, and developed the site in stages over more than a decade rather than as a single resort complex, aiming to create a functioning town called El Gouna rather than just a chain of hotels.

The project took far longer to become profitable than most conventional real estate developments, and required Sawiris to weather Egypt's economic instability, currency devaluations and the sharp fall in regional tourism after the 2011 uprising and subsequent security concerns. El Gouna eventually grew into a town of several thousand permanent residents with its own hospital, schools, airport and a well-regarded film festival that Sawiris founded in 2017.

He later expanded the same model into ski resort developments in the Swiss Alps and other Red Sea and North African tourism projects, describing his approach as building complete communities rather than isolated developments.