Knowledge & Intelligence Platform
MENA Water Review
The knowledge platform for water in the Middle East & North Africa
Falaj at Misfat al Abriyeen, Oman. Photo: Andy Arbeit
Our picks
The Leak Hunters
Between a third and half of the water pumped into the region’s city networks never reaches a paying customer.
Read the story
Water in Egypt
Egypt is the archetype of a single-river economy: more than 90% of its freshwater arrives via the Nile, making the country acutely exposed to upstream development and climate variability.
Groundwater & Aquifers
The region's largest and least visible water resource: fossil aquifers, falling water tables, salinity and the recharge schemes trying to slow the decline.
The Saudi Arabia market
The authorities that procure water infrastructure, how the deals are put together, and what is in the pipeline.
The machines that halved the price of seawater
Between 2018 and 2020 the winning bid for desalinated water nearly halved, to 27.7 cents.
Read the briefIntelligence
Project tracker
The latest reported milestone on the region's live water projects, from procurement to construction.
- DesalinationSousse Seawater DesalinationSONEDE lists the plant at 50,000 m3/day expandable to 100,000 m3/day for 133 million dinars…TunisiaPlannedSep 2026
- ConveyanceKouhrang 3 Dam and Transfer TunnelThe owner's transparency portal records overall progress at 65 per cent, the tunnel at 98 per…IranStalledSep 2026
- DesalinationHawar SWROBids opened for a separate 300 m3/day brackish water RO plant on HawarBahrainIn tenderAug 2026
- DesalinationBasra Seawater DesalinationUS$1.32 billion transmission package letIraqUnder constructionAug 2026
- DesalinationDakhla Wind-Powered DesalinationPlant reported almost ready to begin operatingMoroccoUnder constructionAug 2026
- ConveyanceNew Administrative Capital Nile Water TransmissionCapital still supplied by two temporary lines of about 300,000 m3/day, with the 400,000…EgyptUnder constructionAug 2026
The region
Country profiles
Twenty reports, one for every country from Morocco to Iran: resources, institutions, infrastructure and the market each creates.
Morocco
Morocco has built its water security on dams for half a century, but a run of severe droughts has pushed the kingdom toward the sea: a wave of large desalination plants, some of the world's largest, is now reshaping supply for cities and export agriculture alike.
Lebanon
Lebanon is comparatively rich in rainfall and springs, yet suffers acute service intermittency, high losses and near-absent wastewater treatment, a governance-and-financing challenge more than a resource one.
Iraq
Iraq depends on the Tigris and Euphrates for almost all of its surface water, and both rivers are arriving with less water and more salt as upstream use grows.
United Arab Emirates
The UAE has driven the global cost of solar-linked desalination to record lows and stores strategic reserves in the Liwa aquifer, even as it manages some of the world's highest per-capita consumption.
Reference
Knowledge hubs
Region-wide themes, each pairing an in-depth reference file with interactive data and live project intelligence.
Reporting
Visual stories
Long-form reporting with maps, photographs and data, on the human side of the numbers in the rest of the platform.
The Gulf · Desalination & conflict
Four Days of Water
About 40 per cent of the world’s desalinated water is made around one narrow, contested sea. In 2026 the plants were struck from the air, on bot…
Dead Sea · Jordan, Israel & Palestine
The Sea That Is Leaving
The Dead Sea is dropping about a metre a year and taking its shoreline with it. More than 6,000 sinkholes, a river spent before it arrives, and a resc…
Saudi Arabia · Fossil groundwater & food
Circles in the Sand
Saudi Arabia grew wheat in the desert with ice-age water and became a wheat exporter, then stopped and went looking for someone else’s water.
Iraq, Türkiye & Syria · The Tigris and Euphrates
The Land Between the Rivers
The rivers that invented irrigation now reach Iraq with less water and more salt. Upstream dams, a marsh drained and half-restored, and a basin shared…
Calendar
Upcoming events
WETEX (Water, Energy, Technology and Environment Exhibition)
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA)
Cairo Water Week 2026
New Cairo, Egypt
Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation, Egypt
The 7th Arab Water Conference
New Cairo, Egypt
Arab Water Council, with Egypt's Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation
Analysis
Intelligence
A dated monthly market briefing and evergreen technology briefs. The professional layer of the platform.
Market briefing: MENA water, August 2026
Gulf desalination plants come under attack for the first time since 1991, Hormuz stays mined, and procurement carries on around both. Kuwait signs, Jordan's carrier finds its lenders, Sharakat's plan slips past its own dates.
Read this editionWater for the machines: data centres in the desert
The Gulf is announcing AI campuses at gigawatt scale in the world’s most water-scarce region. What cooling actually draws, what operators disclose, and the column they leave blank.
Banking water underground: the region's other reservoirs
Open reservoirs lose water to the desert sky. Recharge dams, infiltration basins and injection wells store it where nothing evaporates, and Abu Dhabi banked a 90-day emergency reserve in its dunes.