Ali Abdelaziz sees children as a "gift from God," so much so that he has 10 of his own, even if Egypt’s government struggles to stem a "catastrophic" population boom.
However, Egypt’s overpopulation is adding pressure on the economy, already reeling from the political and security turmoil since the 2011 uprising that toppled former president Hosni Mubarak.
With 96 million inhabitants, the Arab world’s most populous country adds 1.6 million people every year to its population.
With 95 percent of Egypt’s land uninhabitable desert, the population is concentrated around the narrow Nile valley and Nile Delta.
In Cairo, a megalopolis of nearly 20 million inhabitants, the population density is around 50,000 inhabitants per square kilometer, or nearly 10 times that of London.
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has said population growth is "a challenge as critical as that of terrorism". The government launched a new family planning campaign last year under the slogan "two are enough," to try to contain the phenomenon.
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