The Egyptian government plans to implement a megaproject to cultivate over 1 million feddans (one feddan equals 4,200 square meters), in a move aimed to boost food security in the Arab world’s most populous country.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi held a meeting on March 28 to discuss the implementation of the project dubbed the New Delta. According to a presidential statement, the giant project, west of the Nile Delta in Lower Egypt, is part of government plans to create new agricultural and urban communities characterized by modern administrative systems.

Presidential spokesperson Bassam Rady said the project along the Dabaa Axis on Egypt’s northwest coast will encompass industrial complexes based on agricultural production and create thousands of new jobs.

“The New Delta project is the future of Egypt. It will be implemented in two years,” Sisi said in statements during his visit to the Suez Canal Authority’s Maritime Training and Simulation Center in the canal city of Ismailia. The visit was part of the Egyptian celebration of refloating the giant container ship Ever Given, which ran aground in the Suez Canal on March 23.