Greening the Desert: Egypt Has Exciting Plans to Utilise Its Valuable Water Resources to Promote Agriculture and Help Draw Its Burgeoning Population Away from the Densely over Populated Towns and Cities, Using Private and Public Funding

Skinner, Anthony, The Middle East

IN LINE WITH its grand scheme to attract record levels of foreign direct investment (FDI) and privatise state assets, the Egyptian government is pressing ahead with plans to bring private capital and vision into the oldest business of all--agriculture and irrigation.

Improving the efficient usage of water by Egypt's agricultural community remains something of a priority for Cairo, which, along with the World Bank, set its sight on increasing water productivity by 15% in 2005. Egypt's Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation is now courting the private sector to manage irrigation activities in the western delta. The West Delta Conservation and Irrigation Rehabilitation Project is part of this broader plan to extend the water flows of the Nile, which currently meets 95% of the country's water requirements, to the outer fringes of the delta--areas that have so far failed to use surface water effectively for irrigation activities, drawing instead on limited groundwater reserves.

The size of the West Delta project is impressive, covering a concession area of just over 450,000 hectares in the southern region of the western delta. A private sector operator …

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Publication information: Article title: Greening the Desert: Egypt Has Exciting Plans to Utilise Its Valuable Water Resources to Promote Agriculture and Help Draw Its Burgeoning Population Away from the Densely over Populated Towns and Cities, Using Private and Public Funding. Contributors: Skinner, Anthony - Author. Magazine title: The Middle East. Issue: 376 Publication date: March 2007. Page number: 52+. © 2009 IC Publications Ltd. COPYRIGHT 2007 Gale Group.

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