Egypt’s Ministry of Finance is preparing to bring 16 public-private partnership (PPP) projects worth a combined $3.08 billion to market, spanning desalination plants, industrial wastewater treatment facilities and electricity infrastructure, according to a government document reported by Al Borsa News. Some of the projects have already reached advanced tendering stages, meaning contracts could be awarded before the rest of the pipeline is finalized.
Desalination dominates the pipeline
Four desalination projects account for roughly $2.68 billion, or 87%, of the total value. Two are already out to tender: a $1 billion plant in Suez and an $800 million plant in Port Said, which together would add about 1 million cubic metres a day of capacity across two phases. Two further desalination projects have reached final tendering stages, a $170 million plant in Alamein and a $710 million facility at Ain Sokhna in the Suez Canal Economic Zone.
Wastewater and power round out the plan
The pipeline also includes four industrial wastewater treatment plants, in Amreya, Abu Rawash, Port Said and Wadi El Natrun, along with a sludge treatment plant at Abu Rawash. The ministry has not published a full breakdown of how the remaining funds split between wastewater and power projects, nor named every individual scheme or set completion dates.
Separately, Egypt’s Electricity Ministry is in talks with Belgium’s Hydrovolta about tying desalination into the country’s existing power infrastructure, weighing a project that would eventually desalinate up to 10 million cubic metres of water a day by 2050, starting with a 3.35 million cubic metre first phase designed to extract chemicals from desalination byproducts. The plan is part of Egypt’s broader push to raise daily desalination capacity from about 1 million cubic metres in 2023 to 8.85 million cubic metres by 2050, a build-out estimated to require some $8.5 billion in capital investment. It follows Egypt’s recent talks with Rosatom on nuclear-linked desalination at El Dabaa, and comes weeks after Cairo hosted the second Arab-African water and energy investment conference, underscoring how central private capital has become to the country’s water strategy.
Sources: Smart Water Magazine, Enterprise