Advancing Egypt’s Sustainable Agricultural Water Management
Start Date
February 19, 2025
End Date
February 20, 2025
Type
General event
Location
Cairo, Egypt
Advancing Egypt’s Sustainable Agricultural Water Management
February 19 – 20, 2025, ICARDA and the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation of Egypt (MWRI) co-hosted a high-level consultation workshop in Cairo, Egypt, to strengthen ongoing collaboration and tackle pressing water and food security challenges.
This workshop followed the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between ICARDA and the ministry on October 16, 2024, during Cairo Water Week, highlighting their shared commitment to advancing water security and agricultural resilience in the country.
Setting the Stage for Collaboration
Over two days, the workshop brought together government representatives, national partners, researchers, and ICARDA scientists to evaluate the current and future challenges to water security in Egypt. They introduced new, context-adapted packages of best management practices and interventions to ensure sustainable and resilient water management aligned with Egypt's mega projects. The event began with opening remarks, followed by key presentations and discussions on MWRI's efforts to address water scarcity and ICARDA's groundbreaking innovations for water resource management and resilient agri-solutions for the dry region.
In his opening remarks, Aly Abousabaa, director general of ICARDA, highlighted that Egypt has optimized water resources for decades, but with continued population growth and land expansion, water resources in Egypt are facing increasing pressure.
"ICARDA's integrated packages of interventions in water management, resilient crops, and digital tools can boost efficiency, remove barriers across Egypt's agri-food system and ensure food and water security"
Eng. Walid Hakiki, Head of Planning Sector, MWRI, reiterated the MoU's role in fostering collaboration.
"We aim to outline a concrete roadmap based on ICARDA's context-adapted packages of best management practices and interventions to secure sustainable and resilient water management"
Prof. Sherif El Mohammadi, President of the National Water Research Center, stressed the vital need for collaborations and partnerships to fill the existing water research gaps.
"Egypt's water security is national security. Addressing population growth and food security requires policies, research, and innovation for development," he stated.
ICARDA scientists actively participated in these sessions, with Dr. Vinay Nangia, Soil, Water, and Agronomy Team Leader at ICARDA, highlighting ICARDA's innovative solutions and ongoing efforts to support Egypt's water security. Dr. Mohie El Din Omar, Irrigation and Water Research Associate at ICARDA, further elaborated on ICARDA's ongoing activities with MWRI in Egypt, emphasizing collaborative research efforts to enhance water management.
Towards the development of a collaboration roadmap
Participants engaged in extensive group discussions and outlined a roadmap for collaboration, prioritizing key areas, including:
Alternative water resources, such as desalination of brackish groundwater, treatment of drainage water, atmospheric water harvesting, flashflood harvesting, and more.
Improving land and water productivity through modern irrigation techniques, sensor-based irrigation advisories, improved Water User Associations (WUAs) decision-making, crop selection changes, and other methods.
Enabling environment for scaling interventions by focusing on understanding and improving business models, suitability analysis, field validations and demonstrations, and coordination between decision-making bodies.
Cross-cutting topics, such as the application of digital and ICT tools, green transition considerations, capacity enhancement, and partnership building.
Moving forward, ICARDA will continue to foster strategic collaborations while working closely with national partners and governments to deliver climate-smart agricultural solutions for improved water management and food security in vulnerable drylands.
