Egypt’s Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation, Mohamed Abdel Aty, held a meeting, on Tuesday, with Abdel Latif Khaled, the Ministry’s advisor, to follow up on the implementation of modern irrigation projects.

Abdel Aty stated that the ministry’s plan to switch to modern irrigation systems aims to rationalise water uses and achieve sustainable development for agricultural development projects, which will have a positive impact on farmers in the first place. 

He noted that this giant project aims to transform 3.70 million feddan from flood irrigation to systems of modern irrigation within 3 years. 

The minister added that the ministry’s affiliated bodies began to organise many expanded conferences in various governorates in coordination with the Ministry of Agriculture, the National Bank of Egypt, the Agricultural Bank and the governors on the rehabilitation of canals and the shift from flood irrigation to modern irrigation.

On 5 August, a joint cooperation protocol to implement the national initiative to develop irrigation and transfer into modern irrigation was signed by the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation, the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation, National Bank of Egypt, and Agricultural Bank of Egypt. 

This protocol aims to achieve joint cooperation between all concerned parties to implement an ambitious plan to achieve sustainable development for agricultural development projects, by providing the necessary technical and financial support to modernise its irrigation system, in order to achieve optimal utilization of the available water resources.

Moreover, the protocol includes also providing the necessary funding for the costs of rehabilitating and equipping canals, and providing the costs of switching to the use of modern irrigation networks, in addition to providing the necessary technical support through specialists in the Ministries of Water Resources and Irrigation, and Agriculture and Land Reclamation to rehabilitate canals, and the transition from flood irrigation to modern irrigation.