MODERN EGYPT

Manufacturing green



Meanwhile, elsewhere on the continent, things are moving at a faster pace.

Global warming may be greening the desert in small, barely measurable ways but, in parts of Egypt, the greening is being advanced in an artificial way, and on an industrial scale.

Egypt has an expanding population and water is becoming an ever more a precious resource.

Waiting to find out if the deserts are greening is not a realistic option.

Remote sensing, radar imagining from space, began in 1981 and showed scientists what was going on under the Saharan sand.

The aquifer, a collection of reservoirs trapped underground between layers of permeable rock, was studied and mapped for the first time.

Tapping into this supply has meant deserts areas can, with skill and judgement, be transformed into farmable land.

Thank to the work of people like Mr el-Baz, the greening of the desert is happening in Egypt in a controlled way.

Out of the newly irrigated desert we now see the commercial growing of oranges, limes and mangoes.

Further, the Egyptian government is actually sponsoring people to settle in the desert to farm, using the water supply they can now tap into and pump out from under the sand.

The programme is part of an ambitious and controversial plan to reclaim 3.4 million acres of desert.

The trend in other parts of the continent may be a migration of people into the cities and away from arid and semi-arid places, but in Egypt, where the desert is undeniably getting greener, the reverse is true.