Water in Egypt

Egypt is almost rainless, and the Nile provides about 93% of its renewable water resources.^1 2 The Nile Valley and Delta are home to 95% of the population, on 4% of the land.² To stretch its share, Egypt reuses agricultural drainage water on a large scale and is expanding desalination on its coasts.^2 3 Upstream, Ethiopia inaugurated its Grand Renaissance DamGrand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) Ethiopia’s large dam and power stations on the Blue Nile. Construction began in 2011, and the dam was inaugurated in 2025. Source: Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, Encyclopædia Britannica in September 2025 without a binding operating agreement with Egypt.⁴

For most of Egypt’s history, the river set the terms. Under the old basin system, fields were flooded behind earth banks for up to six weeks, leaving a layer of silt and allowing one crop a year.⁵ Because flood levels shaped the harvest, nilometersNilometer A structure for measuring the level of the Nile flood, so that dykes and canals could be prepared in time. At Rawda, marks on the column showed the height of the flood as the water rose through the well. Source: Rawda Island Nilometer, Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities that measured them were also used to set taxes.^6 5 On Rawda Island in Cairo, one built in 861 still stands: a marble column in a stone-lined well.⁶ The Aswan High Dam, completed in 1970, brought the flood under human control.⁷

Control did not add water. Egypt’s share of the Nile remains the 55.5 billion m³ a year allocated in 1959, when the country had about 26 million people; by 2024 it had 116.5 million.^2 8 9 Per-capita availability, which the water ministry put at about 490 m³ a year in June 2026, has crossed the UN threshold for absolute water scarcityAbsolute water scarcity In the measure hydrologists commonly use, a population faces water stress when annual supplies fall below 1,700 m³ per person, water scarcity below 1,000 m³, and absolute scarcity below 500 m³. Source: Policy Brief: Water Quality, UN-Water (2011).¹⁰ Other sources fill part of the gap: counting reused drainage water, groundwater and desalinated water, the Nile provides about 68% of total supply.² The new Ethiopian dam is already being felt. Weeks after its inauguration, Egypt accused Ethiopia of uncoordinated releases and raised outflows from the High Dam (see Shared waters).¹¹

One interactive map of Egypt's water, built from real geodata. Climate & drought maps the aridity gradient (WorldClim) with warming projections. The Water risk layer's WRI Aqueduct indicators, covering overall water risk, water stress and flood risk (plus groundwater decline where the trend is significant), shade every river sub-basin by its 0–5 risk score. Demand shows where the population, and the water demand, concentrate. Infrastructure brings the physical system together: rivers, dams (FAO AQUASTAT), treatment plants, desalination and the major conveyors. Shared waters outlines the transboundary river basins and aquifers that Egypt shares with other countries, each drawn in full across the border; hover an outline for the countries that share it. Hover any sub-basin or marker for detail; sources are cited under each view.

Egypt spans 1,001,450 km², most of it desert, with about 3,500 km of coast on the Mediterranean and Red Sea.² The Nile Valley and Delta hold 95% of the population on just 4% of the land.² The Delta covers the river’s last 160 km and 250 km of coast.² The lowest point, the Qattara Depression in the north-west, lies 133 m below sea level.¹ In winter the Sinai mountains and several northern coastal cities see frost and snow.²

Rainfall

Egypt is almost rainless. Long-term precipitation averages 51 mm a year across the country.¹ Most places receive less than 80 mm. Alexandria gets up to 200 mm, and Cairo just over 10 mm.² North Sinai receives about 120 mm.¹ South of Cairo, years can pass without rain before a sudden downpour sets off flash floods.²

In the World Bank Climate Change Knowledge Portal’s ERA5 reanalysis, averaged over the whole of Egypt, about 12 mm of rain falls in a year (1991–2020). Station records and national averages use other sources and baselines, so their figures can differ (the text cites 51 mm a year, FAO’s long-term average). About 55% of the rain falls in January, February and March, and no month averages as much as 5 mm. At such low totals, percentage changes in rainfall between decades mean little in absolute terms.

Heat

Summer temperatures reach 38–43 °C, with extremes of 49 °C in the southern and western deserts.¹ The Mediterranean coast is cooler, with maximums around 32 °C.¹ In spring the khamaseen winds push daily highs to about 40 °C, with jumps of up to 20 °C within two hours.² Egypt has warmed by 0.53 °C a decade over the past 30 years, the World Bank reports.⁸ Heat waves and hot days are increasing at all weather stations. Flash floods have become more frequent since 2010.²

The same reanalysis gives a mean temperature of 23.0 °C for 1991–2020 and a warming of about 0.40 °C a decade over 1971–2022. Station records and national reports use other sources and periods, so their warming rates can differ (the text cites 0.53 °C a decade over the past 30 years from the World Bank).

The Delta and the sea

The Delta is the most exposed ground. More than 30% of it lies below 2 m above sea level.¹⁷ Global mean sea level rose by an average 3.5 mm a year in 1993–2006, and the Abu Qir tide gauge records 6.4 mm a year.² The IPCC projects that 1,500–2,600 km² of the Delta could be exposed to flooding by 2100 under 0.75 m of sea-level rise plus up to 0.25 m of subsidence.¹⁸ Egypt’s adaptation planning works with scenarios of 0.5 m and 1 m by 2100.²

Projections

Warming of 1.5–3 °C is expected by mid-century, with larger increases inland.⁸ Egypt could see about 40 more extremely hot days a year by then.⁸ The Nile is the great unknown. Projections for the Blue Nile range from a 19% fall to a 29% rise in flow.² Rainfall variability in the basin could rise by 50% by 2100.⁸ Across the Mediterranean, the IPCC expects rainfall to fall by 4–22% by the end of the century, depending on emissions.¹⁸

Projected change for Egypt

The table gives the CMIP6 multi-model median from the same World Bank portal, as change against 1995–2014. Projections cited in the text may use other models, scenarios or baselines, so their figures can differ.

One river, counted twice

Egypt’s water budget starts with the Nile’s 55.5 billion m³ and stretches it through reuse. Drainage water is captured and pumped back into canals, about 9.7 billion m³ a year in the Delta on one study’s estimate, which adds 2.9 billion m³ of treated domestic wastewater reused in the Delta.¹⁹ Treated municipal wastewater increasingly joins it. Renewable groundwater in the Delta and valley is largely Nile seepage, the same water counted again. The Western Desert taps the non-renewable Nubian Sandstone for oasis agriculture.

The rainfall that matters falls upstream. A 1 mm change in Nile basin precipitation shifts runoff at Lake Nasser by roughly 3 billion m³.⁸ The Blue Nile’s driest ten years on record, 1978–1987, averaged 38.5 billion m³ a year.²

Supply by source

The main river

The main river of Egypt in the dataset is the Nile, which also flows through Burundi, Ethiopia (Blue Nile), Rwanda, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. It runs 1,547 km in Egypt; its modelled natural flow, the long-term average before any withdrawals, reaches 3,217 m³/s inside the country, and 0% of that length is still classed as free-flowing.

The dams on it, from the FAO AQUASTAT inventory, are listed river by river under Infrastructure.

In 2018 officials counted about 60 billion m³ available in total: the Nile share plus just under 5 billion from non-renewable desert groundwater. Agriculture used 84% of it.²⁰

Capping rice

In April 2018 parliament amended the 1966 agriculture law. The government can now ban water-intensive crops in some areas, with fines and prison terms for violators.²⁰ The rice area was cut to 724,200 feddans, a change expected to save 3 billion m³ of water.²⁰ Farmers had planted about 1.8 million feddans the year before, far above the official allotment.²¹ Days later the government allowed a further 100,000 feddans for the season, to be irrigated with drainage water.²²

Farming the desert

At the same time Egypt is pushing irrigation into the desert. The Toshka project, launched in 1997, was revived in July 2020 by 162 national companies. It uses centre-pivot irrigation.²³ By late 2023 it had 300,000 acres under wheat.²³ The New Delta scheme targets a million feddans.²⁴ Its water comes from agricultural drainage, treated at the New Delta plant (see Infrastructure).²⁵ By August 2026 its conveyance system was 79% complete. It has 13 pumping stations and 174 km of channels to serve about 362,000 feddans.²⁶ The two conveyance routes from the Bahr El-Baqar plant to farmland in Sinai were about 89% complete by the same month. They have 18 pumping stations to serve about 456,000 feddans.²⁶

The 1.5 Million Feddan Project, first stage of a four-million-feddan plan, draws non-renewable groundwater from depths of up to 1,500 m through more than 5,000 wells. A 2026 review found that it went ahead without feasibility studies, with planning and implementation running side by side.²⁷

Use by sector

Withdrawals over time

FAO’s AQUASTAT estimates put Egypt’s freshwater withdrawals at 48.2 billion m³ in 1975 and 77.5 billion m³ in its latest estimate (2017). Agriculture’s share of the total moved from 86% in 1994 to 79% in the latest estimate (2017).

FAO puts the area equipped for irrigation at 3,823,000 ha in 2016, its latest count, with surface water supplying 74% of it and groundwater 6%.²⁹ The national supply mix, drainage reuse and the Nile allocation are under Water resources, and the 79% of withdrawals that go to agriculture under Water use.

Old Lands and New Lands

In the Old Lands surface irrigation is combined with water-lifting systems; pressurised irrigation, whether sprinkler or drip, is compulsory by law on the New Lands, which lie at the end of the canal system on mostly sandy soil, where crops tend to be tree crops and vegetables.¹ On FAO’s 2010 figures surface irrigation still covered 76% of the area under full control.

Policy

The state’s main on-farm programme is marwa modernisation, which the World Bank describes as replacing earth canals with low-pressure pipelines and switching pumps from diesel to electricity. The World Bank’s completion report of 2018 describes a government target of five million feddans of Old Lands, with farm-level efficiency to rise from 50% to 80% by 2030 under the Strategy for Sustainable Agricultural Development.³⁰ A JICA survey for a planned loan reported in 2023 that, as of 2022, a national programme was to introduce modern on-farm irrigation over about four million feddans of Old Lands. In a questionnaire in three priority areas, about 90% of farmers said they would not install drip irrigation at a cost of 18,000–24,000 Egyptian pounds a feddan, mostly because of the cost; 96% said the same of sprinklers.³¹ The updated agricultural strategy to 2030, as tabulated in the same report, aims to raise the share of land under modern or modernised irrigation from 16.5% to 31.7%.³¹ Egypt’s Fourth National Communication adds that enforcement now includes fines for farmers using inefficient irrigation methods, while financial constraints and reluctance to give up traditional techniques limit the spread of drip.² Rice limits and canal lining are under Water use and Infrastructure.

Reuse in farming

Most reuse in farming is indirect. A 2022 strategy by CEDARE and IWMI puts reuse of treated wastewater and agricultural drainage water together at 14.08 billion m³ in 2020.³² The reuse code (501 of 2015) assigns crops by treatment grade; a 2022 strategy by CEDARE and IWMI says it still bars treated wastewater for vegetables, although its own table lists processed vegetables under grade B.³² The Fourth National Communication presents drainage-water treatment at Mahsama, Bahr El-Baqar and New Delta, and reuse of treated wastewater, as adaptation measures for agriculture.² The plants are covered under Infrastructure; irrigation modernisation and reuse projects across the region are on the Agriculture & Food hub.

The system’s anchor remains the Aswan High Dam and Lake Nasser, with a gross capacity of 162 billion m³ on the FAO AQUASTAT dam inventory this page’s own table uses.⁷ Downstream, a chain of control works is more than a century old. It includes the Old Aswan dam and Asyut (both 1902, the Aswan dam heightened again to 1933), Esna (1908) and Nag Hammadi (1930), and the Delta barrages of 1840.¹ Hydropower from the Aswan dams and the Esna and Nag Hammadi barrages supplies about 3% of Egypt’s energy production.² Plans to 2030 add 215 drinking-water treatment plants with 4.365 million m³ a day of capacity.²

Tracked projects

Open the project database for Egypt

Canals, drains and pumps

About 40,000 km of principal, main, branch and distributary canals branch from the Nile, FAO records, with mesqas in addition.¹ In the New Lands, cascades of pumping stations lift water up to 50 m from the main canals to the fields.¹ Drainage became a national programme only from 1970, and 99 pumping stations now handle drainage effluent.¹ The Al Salam Canal mixes drainage water with Nile water at a ratio of 1:1.¹

Lining the canals

Canal lining is the flagship efficiency programme. Launched in 2020, it set out to line 20,000 km of the 55,000 km of canals fed by the Nile.³³ The ministry estimated the saving in seepage losses at 5 billion m³ a year.³³ A first phase of 7,000 km was costed at EGP 18 billion.³⁴ By mid-2022 the whole programme was put at EGP 80 billion, for completion by mid-2024.³⁵

Progress figures depend on the source and the date. The planning ministry reported 831 km by January 2021, at a cost of EGP 3 billion, and the irrigation ministry 3,134 km by November 2021.^36 37 In June 2022 it reported 5,242 km.³⁵ The World Bank, citing ministry figures of July 2022, gave 4,447 km completed and 4,185 km under way.⁸ In July 2024 the minister told a parliamentary committee that 7,700 km had been rehabilitated, with 2,000 km more to complete.³⁸ He cited the same 7,700 km in June 2026.³⁹ The 2025/26 national plan budgets canal rehabilitation and lining over 600 km.⁴⁰

The approach has since narrowed. In January 2023 the minister called lining one means of rehabilitation, not a goal, and said concrete need not be used where suitable alternatives exist. Some canals were to be relined at the contractor’s expense.⁴¹ Members of parliament had filed nearly 50 briefing requests on the project’s negative effects and on work delivered below specification.⁴² A former irrigation minister called the 5 billion m³ saving exaggerated. He put seepage losses from the Nile and all canals at about 8 billion m³ a year.⁴²

Groundwater carries the other cost. A 2026 model of Gharbia governorate found that canal seepage supplies about 20% of recharge to the shallow aquifer. Lining all its canals cut that seepage by about 96%.⁴³ Field monitoring and modelling in Qalyubia and Sharqia projected a 3.5 m fall in groundwater levels if the whole canal network were lined.⁴⁴ An earlier Delta model still judged lining the most suitable option for managing water in the region.⁴⁵

Desalination

Desalination has grown quickly from a small base. Capacity rose from 140,000 m³ a day in 2014 to 750,000 m³ a day in 2021, across 76 plants.⁸ By April 2026, 129 plants produced 1.411 million m³ a day, and 19 more were under construction.³ The Galala plant on the Red Sea, at about 150,000 m³ a day, is among the newest.² Targets conflict. The national communication cites about 1.5 million m³ a day by 2030, while the NDC names 4 million.^2 17 For 2050 the national strategy aims at about 9 million m³ a day, built in successive five-year plans.⁴⁶ In May 2023 the Sovereign Fund of Egypt prequalified 17 consortia for the first renewable-powered phase.⁴⁷

Wastewater and drainage reuse

In 2012 Egypt produced 7,078 million m³ of municipal wastewater, collected 92% of it and treated 57%.¹ Coverage has since widened but stays uneven. The national communication (2025) counts 409 municipal treatment plants serving 59.7% of the population, 90% in urban areas but 12% in rural ones.² A 2026 review, citing reporting from 2021, put the number of treatment plants at more than 480, with a combined capacity of about 2 billion m³ a year and 150 more under construction.²⁷ In 2015 only 6% of villages had wastewater treatment.⁴⁸ The National Rural Sanitation Program aims to cover all rural villages, home to more than 45 million people.⁴⁸

Few countries recycle on Egypt’s scale. The Bahr El-Baqar (5.6 million m³/day) and New Delta/Hammam (7.5 million m³/day) plants are the largest treatment works on earth, built to reclaim drainage for new desert farmland. Guinness World Records certifies the New Delta plant as the largest water treatment facility anywhere.⁴⁹ The Bahr El-Baqar plant, inaugurated in September 2021, has the capacity to treat more than 2 billion m³ a year for farmland in Sinai.⁵⁰

Dams and reservoirs

The delta’s drains carry the country’s wastes. The main pollution sources are untreated industrial effluent, municipal sewage, and fertiliser and pesticide runoff.⁵² The 106 km Bahr El-Baqar drain, built in 1914, is among the most polluted drainage systems in Egypt.⁵⁰ The High Dam changed the river as well. Fertilisers have not replaced the 40 million tonnes of silt the flood once deposited, and reduced flow has let seawater into the delta, salinising its soils.⁷

Lake Manzala

The drains end in the coastal lakes. Lake Manzala receives about 7,500 MCM a year, more than 95% of its inflow, from six main drains carrying mostly untreated water.⁵³ Its area shrank from about 1,709 km² in the early 1900s to about 572 km² in 2020.^53 54 Egypt launched a national lake restoration programme in 2017 with Manzala as its priority, and dredging began that year.^53 54 Sampling in 2015, before dredging, recorded dissolved oxygen as low as 0.39 mg/L in the southern sector; in 2022 the low was 0.66 mg/L.⁵⁴ Monitoring in 2021–22 found the lake still hypereutrophic, with high lead, cadmium, nickel and chromium. Its authors judged the chemical restoration incomplete.⁵³

The reported indicators

On the latest values each country reports for SDG indicator 6.3.1, Egypt’s 63% (2024) ranks joint 11th of the 17 countries covered here that report it; years differ by country. The regional comparison is in the wastewater and reuse dashboard.

The colonial agreements

On 7 May 1929 Egypt and Britain exchanged notes on the Nile. Sudan could take no more than 126 m³/s before 1936. No works that reduced Egypt’s water or changed its timing could be built in Sudan or British-administered territory without Egypt’s consent.⁵⁵ The 1959 agreement with Sudan, signed on 8 November, set acquired rights at 48 billion m³ for Egypt and 4 billion for Sudan.⁵⁶ Egypt would build the High Dam. Its extra yield would be split 7.5 billion to Egypt and 14.5 billion to Sudan, for totals of 55.5 and 18.5 billion m³. Egypt paid Sudan £E15 million in compensation, and the two created a Permanent Joint Technical Commission.⁵⁶ The High Dam was completed in 1970.⁷ Egypt holds that the colonial-era treaties give it a right to veto upstream projects.⁵⁷

The upstream challenge

The Nile Basin Initiative formed in February 1999 and now counts ten members.^4 58 Negotiations on a Cooperative Framework Agreement cleared every point by 2007 except Article 14 on water security. Egypt and Sudan wanted their existing uses recognised, which upstream states rejected.^58 59 On 14 May 2010 Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda signed the agreement in Entebbe, followed by Kenya and Burundi.⁵⁸ It entered into force on 13 October 2024 with six parties. Egypt and Sudan declared it not binding on them.⁶⁰ Egypt’s irrigation minister said the country would not concede a single cubic metre of Nile water.⁶¹

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam

Ethiopia laid the dam’s foundation stone in 2011. In 2013 an international panel of experts recommended a joint transboundary impact assessment.⁴ On 23 March 2015 the leaders of Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan signed a Declaration of Principles in Khartoum, including a commitment to cause no significant harm.^62 4 Talks deadlocked in November 2017. In August 2019 Egypt proposed filling over seven years with a minimum annual release of 40 billion m³, which Ethiopia rejected.⁴ In February 2020 Egypt initialled a US-brokered draft, but Ethiopia skipped the signing.⁴

Ethiopia filled the reservoir anyway. The first filling, in July 2020, stored 4.9 billion m³, despite Egypt’s insistence on a binding agreement first.⁶³ In September 2021 the Security Council called for a binding agreement in a presidential statement.⁴ Ethiopia announced the fourth filling in September 2023, which Egypt called illegal, and Cairo ended negotiations that December.^64 4 After the fifth filling in September 2024, Egypt told the Council it reserved the right to take all measures under international law.⁴

The dam was inaugurated on 9 September 2025, and Egypt and Sudan declined to attend. Its reservoir is designed to hold 74 billion m³.^4 65 Within weeks Egypt accused Ethiopia of causing a “man-made flood” through uncoordinated releases. It raised outflows from the High Dam and warned of flooding in Menoufia and Beheira.¹¹ In January 2026 President Trump offered to restart US mediation, which Sisi welcomed.⁴ In August 2026 the irrigation minister said Egypt would not allow new Ethiopian dams on the Nile.⁶⁶

The record

Shared river basin

The register also lists Egypt as a riparian of the Bahr at Tubat basin (7,764 km² in all), with no area, modelled flow or agreement recorded for Egypt there.

The agreements

Joint bodies

• Nile Basin Initiative (NBI)Nile · 1999 · Burundi, DR Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Eritrea (observer)
• Permanent Joint Technical Commission on the Nile (NJTC)Nile · 1959 · Egypt, Sudan

Shared aquifers

• Coastal Aquifer BasinIsrael, State of Palestine · data good
• Nubian Sandstone Aquifer SystemChad, Libya, Sudan · data good
• Sinai–Negev BasinIsrael · data moderate

Egypt has run irrigation from the centre since a public works department was set up in 1836. After several renamings it became the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation in 1999.¹ Its affiliates include the authority that operates the High Dam and the Aswan Dam.¹ From 2009, 8 general directorates and 45 Integrated Water Management Districts replaced the old inspectorates.¹

Drinking water and sanitation follow a separate line. A 2004 road map consolidated most service providers under the Holding Company for Water and Wastewater.⁴⁸ A separate utilities ministry created in 2012 was short-lived:¹ by 2015 the sector was back under the Ministry of Housing, Utilities and Urban Communities,⁴⁸ which the World Bank described in 2017 as overseeing both the holding company and the regulator.⁶⁷ The regulator, EWRA, was still gaining autonomy in 2015.⁴⁸ Law 172 of 2025, in force from about March 2026, replaced it with the Drinking Water and Sanitation Regulatory and Consumer Protection Agency, attached to the Council of Ministers.⁶⁸ The National Council for Climate Change, created in 2015, has been chaired by the Prime Minister since 2019.²

Laws and plans

Law No. 12 of 1984 set the legal basis for irrigation and drainage. Law No. 213 of 1994 added farmer participation through water user associations.¹ Law No. 48 of 1982 protects the Nile from pollution.¹ A new Water Resources and Irrigation Law, No. 147 of 2021, replaced the 1984 irrigation and drainage law.⁶⁹ Planning runs through the National Water Resources Plan to 2037 and the ministry’s strategy to 2050.^8 2 The National Climate Change Strategy 2050 was launched at COP26,² and the NDC was updated on 26 June 2023.¹⁷

Prices

Water is cheap and utilities lose money. In 2015 Cairo’s tariffs were among the lowest in the world, and sewerage was charged at 25% of the water bill.⁴⁸ In 2012 the holding company was losing LE18 million a day, the minister said.⁷⁰ In 2018 drinking-water prices rose by up to 46.5%, and the first block went from 45 to 65 piastres per m³.⁷¹ The World Bank still describes the sector as highly subsidised.⁸

Egypt’s arithmetic is unforgiving. Its Nile share is fixed, and the government’s 2023 climate submission puts its needs at about 114 billion m³ a year.¹⁷ A fall in High Dam inflow from 55 to 45 billion m³ could cut irrigated land by 22%, the World Bank estimates.⁸ Nile flow projections run in both directions, so planning has to cover floods as well as long droughts.^2 8 On the coast, much of the Delta lies only about 1 m above a rising sea.⁸

The strategy is to recycle, line the canals and desalinate the coast. Each step raises a cost question. Desalination targets for 2030 differ by a factor of almost three, and the sector remains highly subsidised.^2 17 8 Upstream, the next long drought will test operations at Ethiopia’s Grand Renaissance Dam.