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Egypt Is Building a New Nile

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Re: Egypt Is Building a New Nile

#21

Post by cherryteastain »

alephnerd wrote: post #11
daedrdev wrote: post #10

This is not the first project like this Egypt has tried. All have failed

State and financial capacity is much stronger in Egypt today versus previous attempts. Egypt's developmental indicators have finally caught up to where the CEE was 5-10 years ago but with a better demographic profile, and Gulf and Asian capital and technology partners are much more hands-on.

If you look at UNDP historical HDI data [1] you will see that Egypt barely caught up with the HDI levels of poorest Eastern European countries like Moldova from 10 years ago and is still well behind the HDI levels of better-off Eastern European countries like Czechia from 1990.

[1] https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/human-development-index#/in...

Re: Egypt Is Building a New Nile

#22

Post by alephnerd »

cherryteastain wrote: post #21
alephnerd wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

State and financial capacity is much stronger in Egypt today versus previous attempts. Egypt's developmental indicators have finally caught up to where the CEE was 5-10 years ago but with a better demographic profile, and Gulf and Asian capital and technology partners are much more hands-on.

If you look at UNDP historical HDI data [1] you will see that Egypt barely caught up with the HDI levels of poorest Eastern European countries like Moldova from 10 years ago and is still well behind the HDI levels of better-off Eastern European countries like Czechia from 1990 . [1] https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/human-development-index#/in...

And there was no guarantee that Egypt would have reached this point today in 2026.

A decade ago, the safer bet would have been that Egypt would collapse just like it's then developmental peer Syria.

The fact that Egypt is at this point today is a testament to the fact that it's has robust enough state capacity that it was able to execute on projects.

> better-off Eastern European countries like Czechia from 1990

Czechia is not Eastern Europe and was a very developed country. I'll wait for inglor_cz to eventually jump into this convo and give context around Czechoslovakia and Central Europe in the 1980s to 90s.

Re: Egypt Is Building a New Nile

#23

Post by a34729t »

alephnerd wrote: post #14
a34729t wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, Egypt and Mexico made major reforms to their water usage in the past and succeeded. Compared to India, which failed abjectly.

How did India's water usage reforms fail? I've been in Egypt and India - they aren't that different, and it's Indian companies that are working on and helping financing these megaprojects in Egypt via the credit line established after the pandemic [0] and it's Indian companies like Wabag that are implementing water treatment projects in Egypt [1]. [0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-12/egypt-say...…

India uses something like a quarter of the world's groundwater. 20 years ago, it was all open channels, which lose 40-80% of water due to evaporation and seepage. Mexico and Egypt fixed this decades ago.

Nowadays, farmers have shifted to directly using groundwater, and just pump as much water as possible from wells (thus depleting them). This is exacerbated by: 1) Relying on flood irrigation (ie just let water flow across the field and evaporate, vs drip) 2) As temperatures rise, using even more water

The situation was already pretty dire, and despite various efforts, it's getting much worse.

https://fse.fsi.stanford.edu/news/indian-groundwater-depleti...

Re: Egypt Is Building a New Nile

#24

Post by yread »

RetroTechie wrote: post #5

Wiki: "A feddan (Arabic: فدّان, romanized: faddān) is a unit of area used in Egypt, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, and Oman. In Classical Arabic, the word means 'a yoke of oxen', implying the area of ground that could be tilled by oxen in a certain time. In Egypt, the feddan is the only non-metric unit which remained in use following the adoption of the metric system. A feddan is divided into 24 kirat (Arabic: قيراط, qīr…

10 million cubic meters per day is roughly 100 cubic meters per second. Aswan discharges 2800 m3/s on average. So around 4% of the flow

Re: Egypt Is Building a New Nile

#25

Post by cherryteastain »

alephnerd wrote: post #22
cherryteastain wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at UNDP historical HDI data [1] you will see that Egypt barely caught up with the HDI levels of poorest Eastern European countries like Moldova from 10 years ago and is still well behind the HDI levels of better-off Eastern European countries like Czechia from 1990 . [1] https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/human-development-index#/in...

And there was no guarantee that Egypt would have reached this point today in 2026. A decade ago, the safer bet would have been that Egypt would collapse just like it's then developmental peer Syria. The fact that Egypt is at this point today is a testament to the fact that it's has robust enough state capacity that it was able to execute on projects. > better-off Eastern European countries like Czechia from 1990 Czec…

Syria had an extremely destructive civil war and one of the worst collapses in living standards ever of any country (measured by however you want to look at it - HDI, GDP/capita...)

Meanwhile Egypt was overtaken by Vietnam and performed similarly to peers like Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Algeria, Philippines.

Egypt's and Sisi's performance is decidedly average.

Re: Egypt Is Building a New Nile

#26

Post by atonse »

culi wrote: post #15

It's practically a project of the Egyptian military who will mostly own the land. They will grow cash crops for export to gain a source of income. This will also drain the ancient and non-renewable Nubian Sandstone Aquifer. This is water that has been trapped for thousands of years. It is the world's largest fossil water system and is of immense scientific value. Not to mention the historic Nile Delta wetlands that w…

I'm curious as to why they aren't considering (solar powered) desalinization as an additional source of water, to pump water directly from the ocean?

Re: Egypt Is Building a New Nile

#27

Post by [deleted] »

legitster wrote: post #12
culi wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a great channel if you don't care about any degree of technical debt and wanna see someone glaze over human rights violations in order to celebrate mega projects. I'd at least highly recommend the DeArrow extensions to de-clickbait this channel's titles. As much as I criticize the channel, I admit I can't look away

He quite often gets into problematic areas of many projects - see his series on Billionaires row in New York. There's just an exceeding amount of signal to noise ratio when it comes to big projects. Criticism of foreign projects comes out of the woodwork by non-local sources, and yet we seem to accept the human toll on Western projects like the Hoover Dam or the Channel Tunnel. Him taking a neutral tone and accepting…

[deleted]

Re: Egypt Is Building a New Nile

#29

Post by ojbyrne »

This article has several passages repeated verbatim. Either bad AI or bad editing, not really a great advertisement for the product (“Brilliant”) it seems to be selling.

Example: “The construction of the Aswan High Dam, completed in 1970, brought clear benefits. It provided a steady supply of hydroelectric power and allowed water to be regulated for year-round irrigation.” appears twice, word for word.

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