Programme description

Title: Water Resources Management Reform Programme
Commissioned by: German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ)
Country: Egypt
Lead executing agency: Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation (MWRI), Institutional Reform Unit (IRU), Ministry for Agriculture and Land Reclamation (MALR), Egyptian Authority for Land Improvement Projects (EALIP)
Overall term: 2009 to 2017

Context

In Egypt, around 80 percent of the country’s limited water resources are used for food production. For about one-third of the Egyptians, agriculture serves as their subsistence basis. Steadily rising population figures and increasing industrialisation have led to greater and greater needs for water, entailing further water pollution. These factors, together with destruction of fertile farmland by excessive construction in the Nile Delta, widen the food gap. Consequently, a very high political priority is assigned to acquisition of new land in desert regions. The water required to achieve this objective makes restrictions on water allotments to the old country inevitable. Even so, the project can succeed only in conjunction with better water management and a stronger involvement of the farmers and their advocacy groups. Thousands of water consumer groups have already been formed but they are in need of support if they are to assume greater responsibility in regard to agreement on water needs, maintenance of the irrigation infrastructure and protection of bodies of water.

Objective

Improvement is achieved in the competence and capacities of the partner ministries and water consumers to carry out integrated water resource management at national, regional and local levels.

Approach

The programme supports public authorities in carrying out institutional reforms on the basis of integrated water resource management, subsidiarity and participation of water users. This also includes supporting the process of organising regional water associations. Partner ministries are supported in developing needs-oriented agricultural extension systems, research concepts and service strategies. To begin with, farmers in the western Nile Delta are to be empowered to solve their problems as a community and to use the new structures of the decentralised water administration that is to be established.

The programme receives significant support from concurrent measures of the KfW in modernising the hydraulic infrastructure and supporting the formation of water user associations.

Results achieved so far

The predecessor projects, Strategic Advisory Service for the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation and Water Management in the Egyptian Irrigated Agriculture, have contributed to pushing the institutional reforms forward and to improving the advisory services of both ministries and their coordination with each other. Based on existing incipient reforms, the MWRI has developed a strategy for further implementation of reform. Important elements for improving farm water management are now at the disposal of the Egyptian partner.

Further information

• Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation
  http://www.mwri.gov.eg
• Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation
  http://www.malr.gov.eg