Egypt aims to develop 21 water desalination plants using cheap renewable energy in a $3 billion initiative

In a country with 104 million people, water shortage is a growing problem, and Egypt relies nearly solely on the Nile for its fresh water supply. The initial phase of the desalination programme is expected to cost $3.30 billion and will produce 0.880 cubic metres of water per day.

More than 200 developers from at least 35 nations had expressed interest in participating in the initial phase, according to Soliman.

To encourage private investment in state-owned assets, the Sovereign Fund was established in 2018.

The program's current emphasis is on encouraging private consortia to build brownfield infrastructure and on using private equity to improve state-owned companies in preparation for initial public offerings.

The Egyptian government has frequently postponed privatisation plans, citing economic shocks like the COVID-19 outbreak and the war in Ukraine, as well as legal impediments, as the reasons for the delays.

According to Soliman, the government's "economic constitution" would be a state ownership policy that specifies which sectors of the economy are available to private participation, and this policy will be used to attract private investment despite the rising cost of capital.

Whether it's in agriculture, tourism, infrastructure, or banking and financial services, he continued, "we as a fund are very narrowly focused on trying to find those champions to grow up."

At the climate negotiations in Sharm el-Sheikh, the government converted nine of fifteen MoUs for green hydrogen projects in the Suez Canal Economic Zone (SCZONE) into framework agreements, with the potential to create millions of tonnes of hydrogen and ammonia.

So-called "green" or "clean" hydrogen is created by employing electrolyzers powered by renewable energy to separate water and oxygen. The Sovereign Fund estimates that the quantity of desalinated water needed for Egypt's projects would be insignificant compared to the quantities produced through the national desalination plan, but the technology is considered as a promising future power source that might reduce emissions.