JEDDAH: Egypt’s Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation, Hani Sewilam, said Saudi Arabia and Egypt continue to strengthen cooperation, particularly in water desalination and reuse, to enhance water and food security in both countries.
Speaking to Al-Eqtisadiah during Saudi Water Week 2026 in Jeddah, Sewilam said discussions with Saudi officials focused on expanding cooperation in desalinating water for agricultural purposes.
He noted that this approach represents one of the most promising long-term solutions to water scarcity, particularly as the growing use of solar energy helps reduce desalination costs while enabling the use of desert land and saline water for food production through advanced agricultural technologies.
He also said he hopes to launch a joint Saudi-Egyptian project using solar-powered desalination to support modern agriculture, with the project expected to come to fruition in the near future, thereby advancing sustainable development and enhancing food security.
He noted that the Kingdom has developed leading expertise in desalination technologies that could be leveraged in future joint projects, while Egypt has made significant progress in reusing agricultural drainage water, emerging as a regional model in the field.
He highlighted Egypt’s construction of the world’s two largest agricultural wastewater treatment facilities: the Bahr El-Baqar plant, with a capacity of 5.6 million cubic meters per day, and the New Delta plant, with a capacity of 7.5 million cubic meters per day. Together, the buildings provide about 5.8 billion cubic meters of water annually for agricultural reuse.
Sewilam said cooperation between Egypt and the Kingdom is based on the exchange of expertise, with Egypt sharing its experience in water reuse and benefiting from Saudi Arabia’s advances in localizing desalination technologies.
He underlined that this complementarity would support the implementation of strategic projects aimed at enhancing water security.
On the scale of existing partnerships, Sewilam said he did not have specific figures available but stressed that cooperation and joint investment between Egypt and the Kingdom in the water sector have grown steadily in recent years, with expectations of further expansion in the coming period.
