The incident caused no casualties and the embassy said on its Twitter account that it was resuming normal business after police finished their investigation at the scene.
A statement released by Egypt’s state information service named the suspect as 24-year-old Abdullah Ayman Abdesamea.
“Preliminary investigations suggest that he embraces some extremist ideas and was intending to use them to commit an act of aggression,” the statement said.
A witness said she heard a blast and then saw a man with a backpack that had caught on fire close to the Semiramis Hotel, across the road from the embassy premises.