# Egypt Address Standard

## Overview

An Egyptian address names a neighbourhood and a governorate more than a city. The envelope carries the street, the neighbourhood the building is in, and the governorate in capitals, and in Greater Cairo the city itself is often left out: `Al Mohandessin, GIZA` is a complete address. Since about 2020 Egypt Post has used a seven-digit postcode that identifies a group of 20 to 60 buildings, while most business records still carry the older five-digit code of the delivery office.

This article describes the Egyptian address format, how CDQ represents it in the CDQ address model, how the governorates and postcodes are handled, and which reference data CDQ maintains. It is the reference for anyone mapping Egyptian business partner data into CDQ, or consuming curated Egyptian addresses from CDQ.

**In this article, you will understand:**

- How an Egyptian address is structured, and which elements are needed to deliver mail
- Why the governorate is written on the envelope, and how the neighbourhood relates to the city
- What the seven-digit postcode identifies, and how CDQ treats the older five-digit code
- How each element maps to a concept in the CDQ address model, and which SAP field it reaches
- Which reference data CDQ maintains for Egypt, and where it is incomplete


Available in:

* [CDQ Wiki: business partner metadata for Egypt](https://meta.cdq.com/DataModel:CDQ/Business_Partner/Address/Country/EG): browse the published Egyptian metadata


## How an Egypt address is built

| Specific to Egypt | Why it matters |
|  --- | --- |
| The governorate is postal | the governorate is written in capitals on its own line, above the postcode, and for Cairo, Giza and Alexandria it often stands in for the city |
| The neighbourhood is written, the city often is not | `Al Mohandessin`, `Dokki`, `Nasr City` or `Heliopolis` is the locality line, and the city it belongs to is implied by the governorate |
| Greater Cairo spans three governorates | Cairo, Giza and Qalyubia form one metropolitan area, so an address in Giza is frequently recorded as "Cairo" |
| The postcode changed from five to seven digits | the seven-digit postcode identifies 20 to 60 buildings; the older five-digit code identifies only the delivery office, and it is still the one most records hold |
| Two scripts and many spellings | names are held in Arabic or transliterated in several ways (`Al Mohandessin`, `El Mohandeseen`, `Mohandessine`), and Arabic text may use Eastern Arabic digits (`٣٠`) |


### The elements

| Element | What it is | Used to address mail | Example |
|  --- | --- | --- | --- |
| governorate | one of the 27 governorates (محافظة, *muhafazah*) | yes, written in capitals | `GIZA` |
| city | the city or town the address is in | often implied by the governorate in large cities, written elsewhere | Giza |
| neighbourhood or village | the district of the city, or the village in a rural area | yes | Al Mohandessin |
| building number and street | building number, then the street name | yes | `30 Moussa Galal Street` |
| floor and apartment | the floor and the apartment or office inside the building | yes, where it applies | `Floor 3, Apartment 5` |
| postcode | seven digits, or the older five | yes | `3759914` |


A complete address in the form Egypt Post asks for:

```
Mohamed Ahmed Mahmoud
30 Moussa Galal Street
Al Mohandessin
GIZA
3759914
EGYPT
```

The neighbourhood is on its own line, the governorate below it in capitals, and the postcode below the governorate. In a rural address, the village follows the street on the street line and the town takes the locality line. That is a presentation convention for the envelope; CDQ stores each value separately.

Mail to a post office box names the post office instead of the street:

```
Mohamed Ahmed Mahmoud
P.O. Box 1234
Main Cairo Post Office
ATABA
CAIRO
EGYPT
```

### The postcode

The **seven-digit postcode** identifies a group of 20 to 60 buildings inside a postal area; the postcode areas do not overlap and leave no gaps. It was rolled out by Egypt Post around 2020. The **five-digit postcode** it replaced identified the delivery office, so it narrows an address to a part of a city rather than to a block.

In the CDQ standard the **seven-digit postcode is canonical**. A five-digit code is accepted as a legacy value: it is kept as supplied and is not treated as an error, but it does not identify a delivery point. Postcodes are written as digits only, without spaces.

### Properties that regularly cause integration errors

A Giza address recorded as Cairo
Al Mohandessin, Dokki, Agouza, 6th of October City and Sheikh Zayed are in the Giza governorate, although they are part of Greater Cairo and many records give `Cairo` as the city. Nasr City, Heliopolis, Maadi and New Cairo are in the Cairo governorate. A record that says "Cairo" for a Giza neighbourhood carries the wrong governorate, and with it the wrong ISO 3166-2 code and SAP region key.

**The neighbourhood is not the city.** The locality line of an envelope names the neighbourhood. Stored as the city, it makes `Al Mohandessin` and `Giza` look like two different places, and two records of the same company no longer compare.

**The building number comes first.** `30 Moussa Galal Street` is building 30. A system that expects the number after the street can take it for part of the street name.

**Spellings vary.** Transliterations from Arabic differ between sources and over time, and articles (`Al`, `El`) and street words (`Street`, `St.`, `Sharia`) are written in several ways. Compare on the governorate, the postcode and the building number before comparing names.

**Landmarks are added to the address.** Records often add a description such as `behind the mosque` or `next to the metro station`. It is useful to a courier but is not part of the postal address.

## How CDQ models an Egypt address

The CDQ address model has two parallel hierarchies. **Administrative areas** represent the political containers, typed `REGION` and `COUNTY`. **Localities** represent the places themselves, typed `CITY`, `DISTRICT`, `QUARTER` or `BLOCK`. Streets are held as **thoroughfares** with the number in its own field, and floors and apartments as typed **premises**.

Egypt maps as follows:

| Egypt element | CDQ concept | Type | SAP field |
|  --- | --- | --- | --- |
| governorate | administrative area, level 1 | `REGION` | `region` |
| city | locality, level 1 | `CITY` | `city` |
| neighbourhood or village | locality, level 2 | `DISTRICT` | `district` |
| street | thoroughfare | `STREET` | street |
| building number | thoroughfare number | n/a | house number |
| floor | premise | `LEVEL` | floor |
| apartment | premise | `APARTMENT` | room number |
| office | premise | `UNIT`, `SUITE` | street 5 |
| PO Box | postal delivery point | `POST_OFFICE_BOX` | PO box |
| postcode | post code | `REGULAR` | post code |


The city and the neighbourhood are kept apart: the city goes to locality level 1 and the neighbourhood to the district field, even where the envelope names only the neighbourhood.

**Street text is kept.** For Egypt, words in the street line that the address parser cannot classify, such as a village name or a landmark, are kept in the street value rather than dropped.

### Mapping the region to an SAP region key

CDQ delivers the governorate in administrative area level 1, with its ISO 3166-2 code (`EG-GZ` for Giza). An SAP system does not validate against ISO: it validates the region field against its own region key table, `T005S`, which is part of a customer's configuration.

The region key is customer-specific configuration, so this standard does not define one: a `T005S` is specific to a customer and to a client, and no single value would be correct everywhere. What this standard fixes is the ISO 3166-2 code. The mapping from it to the key your system expects is yours to maintain.

Two governorates created in 2008, 6th of October and Helwan, were merged back into Giza and Cairo in 2011. Records from those years may still carry them; map them to `EG-GZ` and `EG-C`.

### Worked example

`Nile Trading Co., 30 Moussa Galal Street, Floor 3, Al Mohandessin, Giza 3759914`, in the CDQ address model:

| Field | Value |
|  --- | --- |
| Country | `EG` |
| Administrative area 1 (`REGION`) | Giza Governorate |
| Administrative area 1 code | `EG-GZ` |
| Locality 1 (`CITY`) | Giza |
| Locality 2 (`DISTRICT`) | Al Mohandessin |
| Thoroughfare (`STREET`) | Moussa Galal Street |
| Thoroughfare number | `30` |
| Premise (`LEVEL`) | `3` |
| Post code | `3759914` |


## Reference data CDQ maintains for Egypt

These tables are extracts
The examples below show the shape of each dataset, not its full contents. The complete published lists for Egypt are on the CDQ Wiki page [business partner metadata for Egypt](https://meta.cdq.com/DataModel:CDQ/Business_Partner/Address/Country/EG), which also covers legal forms, identifier types and the integrated data sources.

### Governorates

**27 entries**, each keyed by its ISO 3166-2 code, with names in Arabic, English and several other languages, and common alternative spellings.

| Code | English | Arabic |
|  --- | --- | --- |
| `EG-C` | Cairo Governorate | محافظة القاهرة |
| `EG-GZ` | Giza Governorate | محافظة الجيزة |
| `EG-ALX` | Alexandria Governorate | محافظة الإسكندرية |
| `EG-KB` | Qalyubia Governorate | محافظة القليوبية |
| `EG-LX` | Luxor Governorate | محافظة الأقصر |
| `EG-WAD` | New Valley Governorate | محافظة الوادي الجديد |


### Postcode format

Seven digits, or five for the older code. The value is not rewritten: spaces or hyphens inside a postcode are not removed, and a five-digit code is not converted to seven digits.

What CDQ standardises
The **governorate** is standardised against reference data, by name or by code, and delivered with its ISO 3166-2 code. That code is what to map an SAP region key from. A governorate requested in Arabic is delivered in Arabic.

The **building number** and the **street** are held in separate fields, so the building number reaches the SAP house number field whichever order it was written in.

## Current limitations

These are the gaps worth knowing about before designing an integration.

| Limitation | What it means for an integration |
|  --- | --- |
| **The five-digit postcode is not upgraded** | CDQ keeps the postcode as supplied. A five-digit code is not replaced by the seven-digit one, so it identifies a delivery office, not a delivery point. |
| **The postcode is not normalised** | Spaces, dots or hyphens inside a postcode are kept, so `3759914` and `375 99 14` remain two different values to a comparison. Supply digits only. |
| **Eastern Arabic digits are not converted** | A postcode or building number written as `٣٧٥٩٩١٤` is not converted to `3759914`. Convert digits on your side. |
| **The city is not inferred from the neighbourhood** | An address that names only the neighbourhood and the governorate is not given a city. Supply the city where you need it in the city field. |
| **The governorate is not derived from the postcode or the neighbourhood** | A Giza neighbourhood recorded with `Cairo` keeps the Cairo governorate. Supply the governorate, or check it against the neighbourhood on your side. |
| **No Egyptian street or premise vocabulary is published** | Street words (`Street`, `St.`, `Sharia`, شارع) and floor and apartment words (`Floor`, `Apartment`, الدور, شقة) are not published for Egypt, so abbreviations are not expanded and floors and apartments written into the street text may not be parsed into premises. Supply them in their own fields. |
| **The street line is formatted with the number after the street** | The formatted street line reads `Moussa Galal Street 30`, not in the Egyptian order. The street and the building number are separate fields; build the line from them where you need the Egyptian order. |


## Summary

An Egyptian address is written as the street with its building number, the neighbourhood, the governorate in capitals and the postcode. In Greater Cairo the city is usually implied by the governorate, and Cairo, Giza and Qalyubia are easily confused. The seven-digit postcode identifies a group of buildings; the older five-digit code, still common in records, identifies a delivery office.

In the CDQ standard the seven-digit postcode is canonical and a five-digit code is tolerated as a legacy value. The city goes to locality level 1 and the neighbourhood to the district field, even where the envelope names only the neighbourhood.

CDQ places the governorate in administrative area level 1 with its ISO 3166-2 code, and keeps the street and the building number in separate fields. Floors, apartments and offices are typed premises.

All 27 governorates are maintained as CDQ reference data, with Arabic and English names. Egyptian street and premise vocabulary, postcode normalisation and Eastern Arabic digit conversion are not yet available.

## Related Resources

- [Business partner metadata for Egypt](https://meta.cdq.com/DataModel:CDQ/Business_Partner/Address/Country/EG)
- [United States Address Standard](/documentation/_public/product-manuals/address-guard/country-standards/united-states-address-standard)
- [India Address Standard](/documentation/_public/product-manuals/address-guard/country-standards/india-address-standard)
- [France Address Standard](/documentation/_public/product-manuals/address-guard/country-standards/france-address-standard)


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