President Abdel Fattah El Sisi on Sunday opened an Egyptian desert farming project called New Delta intended to grow wheat on reclaimed land and create more than two million jobs.
The event, held alongside the 2026 wheat harvest on newly cultivated plots west of the Nile Delta, showcased what the government describes as its largest land reclamation project to date, eventually covering 2.2 million feddans (about 9,000 square kilometres).
The project is intended to expand Egypt’s cultivated area by roughly 15 per cent, focusing on wheat, corn, vegetables and export crops such as olives and figs, in an effort to cut the country’s large food import bill and ease pressure on foreign currency.
Total investment in the project to date is about 800 billion Egyptian pounds ($15.1 billion), Mr El Sisi said in a speech on Sunday. This was spent on preparing farmland and building grain silos, industrial areas and new roads linking the reclaimed desert to the Nile Valley and ports, he said.
A central feature of the scheme is the water system needed to irrigate desert land that lies above much of the Delta’s drainage basin.
Water Resources Minister Hany Sweilem used the ceremony to spell out how it works: agricultural drainage from the western Delta is collected and sent to the El Hammam treatment complex on the Mediterranean coast, where up to 7.5 million cubic metres a day are treated before being pumped west along a 170km canal through 13 pumping stations towards Dabaa.
A second, shorter track with another set of large pumping stations is intended to lift additional flows to serve the full 2.2 million‑feddan target.
The system is highly energy-intensive and moves water from low‑lying drainage channels up to higher desert plateaux, a point Mr El Sisi himself underlined during his speech while urging officials to explain costs to the public so they can appreciate the scale of the work that has been done.
The government frames New Delta as a strategic answer to food security risks exposed by repeated crises such as the war in Ukraine and Covid, and to long‑term demographic pressure, arguing that large, mechanised farms can boost yields and exports while creating jobs in farming, logistics and food processing.
The project is overseen by the Future of Egypt Authority for Sustainable Development, a state body headed by military officers and described by officials as one of the government’s “strategic arms” for implementing the President’s vision in agriculture.
Presidential read-outs and cabinet statements list the Armed Forces Engineering Authority and the Armed Forces’ National Service Projects Organisation among the main implementers, including for the El‑Hammam treatment plant and associated power and road networks.
Despite the state hailing the project, rights groups have raised concerns over the broader wave of megaprojects for concentrating economic control in military‑run authorities, increasing opacity over land allocation and diverting scarce public funds from social spending during an IMF‑backed austerity programme.
Environmental experts have also questioned whether relying on energy‑hungry pumping and treated drainage in a water‑stressed country is sustainable, warning of groundwater depletion and the long‑term cost of operating the system.
While officials have released headline figures for reclamation and infrastructure costs, detailed budgets for the New Delta and “Future of Egypt” schemes are not published in Egypt’s regular state budget documents, and contracts are largely handled through military‑linked bodies such as the Future of Egypt Authority and the Armed Forces Engineering Authority.
However, Mr El Sisi insists the New Delta will ultimately underpin a shift from importing basic staples to exporting higher‑value crops, casting farm exports and agro‑industry as a core engine of growth and foreign‑currency earnings.
