Egypt officially enters state of water poverty
Egypt announced that it has entered the stage of water poverty, while talks on Ethiopia’s Nile dam continue to stall.
CAIRO — Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has recently revealed that his country has reached the stage of water poverty with less than 500 cubic meters of water per capita a year.
Speaking to foreign reporters on the sidelines of the World Youth Forum’s fourth edition in Sharm el-Sheikh on Jan. 13, Sisi noted that the global water level is set at 1,000 cubic meters per capita a year.
He said that the volume of water falling on the Ethiopian Highlands amounts to 900 billion cubic meters, which means that Egypt’s and Sudan’s shares do not exceed 10% of the rainfall in Ethiopia.
Mohamed Nasr al-Din Allam, a former Egyptian irrigation minister, told Al-Monitor that water poverty, as defined by the World Bank, is when a country’s renewable internal freshwater resources per capita is less than 1,000 cubic meters annually, which is the minimum rate to meet the citizens’ needs of water and food.
