The Long Game: Inside Naguib Sawiris and ORA Developers’ AED30 Billion UAE Expansion

^{This article is part of the cover story for the Entrepreneur Real Estate Leaders May 2026 Edition.}

There is a particular kind of investor who only moves when everyone else is hesitating. In April 2026, with geopolitical tension casting a shadow across the Gulf, the 71-year-old Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris stood in Ghantoot – the sun drenched stretch of coastline between Dubai and Abu Dhabi – and announced he was doubling his UAE investment from $15 billion to $30 billion. The timing was entirely deliberate.

“I chose this moment to announce the project on purpose,” said Sawiris, Chairman of ORA Developers, with the directness that has made him one of the most quoted voices in global business. “It is an opportunity to demonstrate our commitment to the country and to prove our belief in the future of the UAE.” And then, with a smile that suggested he was only half joking: “Those who are thinking of leaving the UAE, don’t worry … leave your investments to me, and I will complete the project.”

The conviction is backed by results. ORA’s flagship BAYN masterplan in Ghantoot recorded AED 2.7 billion in residential sales in 2025, ranking among Abu Dhabi’s top ten projects in the official ADREC market report and placing ORA third among the emirate’s top developers. The first phase sold out completely, with 40 per cent of buyers UAE nationals – an endorsement, in Sawiris’ view, that goes beyond commercial validation.

“When Emiratis choose your development,” he says, “that tells you something real about what you have built What is taking shape in Ghantoot is formidable in scale. Following ORA’s acquisition of an additional 4.8 million square metres from Abu Dhabi-listed Modon Holding, the total development footprint has doubled to 9.6 million square metres. BAYN will eventually house 32,000 residents across 9,000 homes, anchored by a 1.2-kilometre beachfront, a marina, a lagoon, a 100,000-square-metre sports club, schools, hospitals, retail, offices and a hotel.

Sawiris calls it simply “Ghantoot city – a new city between Dubai and Abu Dhabi. You can work in Abu Dhabi and live here. You can work in Dubai and live here.”

With direct access to Sheikh Maktoum Bin Rashid Road and 25 minutes from Al Maktoum International Airport, the location makes that pitch entirely credible.

Understanding what Sawiris is doing here requires understanding the man. Born in Cairo in 1954, educated at a German school before earning his engineering diploma and a master’s in technical administration from ETH Zurich, he joined the family’s Orascom conglomerate in 1979 and spent the next four decades building, acquiring, fighting and winning on a grand scale. He took Orascom Telecom into 28 countries. He sold his telecom stake for over $4 billion. France awarded him the Légion d’Honneur.

He launched ORA Developers in 2016, and the company now oversees a portfolio worth more than $45 billion across seven countries, from the Ayia Napa Marina in Cyprus to the Eighteen luxury development in Islamabad to a contracted city of 120,000 homes near Baghdad. The thread running through all of it is a comfort with turbulence that few investors genuinely possess.

“When there is a pause in the market and prices soften, that is not a crisis,” he says. “That is a signal. It reflects that it is time to buy. You buy when people are willing to give a discount. Every serious investor knows this. The question is whether you have the conviction to act on it.” The broader market data validates his reading. Dubai recorded AED 252 billion in real estate transactions in Q1 2026 alone, a 31 per cent annual increase.

In the first half of 2025, close to 95,000 investors entered the UAE market – up 26 per cent year-on-year – committing AED 326 billion, a 39 per cent rise in value. Population in Dubai has reached 3.97 million and is growing at 5.5 per cent annually, driven by golden visas, remote-worker permits and a global talent pool that has concluded, with increasing confidence, that the Emirates is not merely a tax address but a genuine home. It is a shift Sawiris has tracked closely, and it has shaped ORA’s entire approach in the region.

“The people coming to the UAE now are not coming to park money and leave,” he says. “They are coming with their families, their businesses, their ambitions. They want schools, hospitals, places to walk by the sea. They want a life. That is what BAYN is being built to give them. We are not selling units – we are building a community.”

His confidence in the country’s model is personal as much as commercial. “More than 200 nationalities live here in peace, with stability and prosperity,” he says. “That is not a small thing. That is remarkable. When you build in a country with that foundation, you are building on solid ground. The fundamentals do not change because of headlines.” The UAE has always had vision, he adds, but the thing that has changed is the delivery:

“The plans are not just plans – they become reality. Infrastructure gets built. Roads get expanded. Airports grow. For a developer with a long-term perspective, there is no better environment in the world right now.”

In Ghantoot, where a 1.2-kilometre beachfront is slowly taking shape along a coastline Sawiris first visited by boat from Dubai – struck, he recalls, by how untouched and calm it was, by the clarity of the water and the quiet that felt increasingly rare along a rapidly urbanising Gulf – that long-term bet is already being poured in concrete.

“I am expecting the property market to continue booming,” he says simply. “Once this crisis is off the news, it will return to the previous boom – and come back stronger than before.”

With AED 30 billion committed, 9.6 million square metres of land secured, and a development that will eventually house a city’s worth of residents on one of the Gulf’s last untouched coastlines, the long game – as Naguib Sawiris plays it – has well and truly begun