A consortium of Canadian Bombardier and local Arab contractors and Orascom Construction have been selected to build a $1.5bn monorail in Cairo.

The hanging train monorail will stretch 52km. It will include 17 stations and connect Cairo, Giza and October 6^th City, according to Egypt’s Housing Minister Mustafa Madbouly.

The first phase will involve 12 stations and the second phase will add another five.

It will be integrated with Cairo’s metro system, which is struggling to cope with Cairo’s more than 20 million inhabitants.

Construction will begin in January 2016 and is due for completion in 2018.

The project is being funded by a 14-year loan.

It was proposed at the Egypt Economic Development Conference in Sharm el-Sheikh in March 2015.