President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi launched the first stage of the national project for reclaiming and cultivating a 1.5 million acres in the desert and to expand the urban space and increase the populated area in Egypt from 6% to 10%, to accommodate the natural growth of the population and provide new prospects for sustainable development by creating modern integrated urban communities, dependent on agriculture as the basis for development. It aims at integrating other economic elements of the surrounding environment, which leads to increasing the agricultural area to 10.6 million acres, an increase of 16.5%.
The project is divided into three phases as follows: The first stage includes 9 regions with a total area of 500 thousand acres, the second stage includes 9 regions with areas of 490 thousand acres, and the third stage will be with a total area of 510 thousand acres in 5 regions and the three stages are irrigated by groundwater.
