Egypt is battling a water shortage and food production issues, as its yearly water supply per capita is expected to plummet from 600 cubic meters to 500 cubic meters by 2025, which is below the UN extreme water scarcity criteria.
To address this issue and provide a soft landing for the country, Egyptian billionaire businessman Nassef Sawiris’ Orascom Construction, an Egyptian-based engineering and construction contractor, is in talks with UAE’s Metito Holdings Limited and Norway’s Scatec ASA to build a $1.5-billion renewables-powered desalination plant.
The move comes in the wake of a water crisis that has left Egypt and other countries in the Middle East and North Africa struggling as they move to address environmental issues linked to water supply and food production.
In recent years, the water shortage has gotten so severe that it has been reported that certain communities in Egypt can spend days without water, with supplies sometimes returning for only a few hours a week. The government and corporate entities can no longer wait and must act now.
The three-company consortium is in talks with Egypt’s national wealth fund to expedite the construction of the planned facility.
The proposal includes a 400-megawatt solar-power facility and a desalination plant capable of processing 1 million to 2 million cubic meters of water per day.
The $1.5-billion desalination plant will be constructed under a build-own-operate-transfer (BOT) contract, which is a common model used to finance large projects, typically infrastructure projects developed through public-private partnerships, according to Karim Madwar, Metito’s managing director for Africa.
“Egypt also has potential for floating mobile desalination plants like the three we are delivering in Saudi Arabia for about $300 million,” he said.
Experts believe the plant’s commissioning will lessen Egypt’s dependency on the Nile River for much of its fresh water, while also consolidating current infrastructure that has been put in place to address the water supply gap.
The initiative will similarly assist Egypt in meeting its water demands, as the country embarks on an ambitious objective to overhaul its fresh water utilization. It presently requires 114 billion cubic meters per year to suit the requirements of its more than 100 million inhabitants.
In an effort to address the country’s rising water supply shortage, Egyptian authorities awarded Egyptian tycoon Hassan Allam’s construction and engineering firm a contract to create new infrastructure to pump Nile water from Mostakbal Misr to new Cairo’s integrated Mega Green City.
By pumping 7 million cubic meters of water into the area, the initiative will aid in the restoration of agricultural land in New Valley.
