Highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, heat waves in Egypt are increasingly severe and frequent, raising the already high evaporation rate, accelerating crop transpiration, increasing soil aridity and elevating water requirements for both human and agricultural consumption in a country where water is imported. The forecasted spike in...

Access to clean and safe water is a prerequisite to meeting basic human rights. Water is indispensable for all productive activities in the sectors of agriculture, industry and energy generation; it is also crucial to the existence of ecosystems and all life within them. However, water scarcity affects more than...

Understanding the logic behind farmers' choice of adaptive water management practice is important to appreciate the opportunities and challenges they face and to scale targeted solutions effectively. This paper aims to understand the main drivers of change that induce adaptation in water management. The Multi-Level Perspective (MLP) framework that juxtaposed...

The four-year initiative, called Center for Renewable Energy in Aquaculture (CeREA), is funded by the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Cairo. The initiative reflects Norway's commitment to enhancing nutrition, promoting job and value creation and empowering local fish value chain actors with climate-smart technologies, particularly small- and medium-scale fish farmers in Africa. Commenting on...

We were launching a rural tourism project just as the Covid-19 pandemic startled the world. How ironic, after waiting years for funding for our local organization Nawaya, we were incapable to do basic field work. We were excited, and decided not to delay important work. As we were unable to...

The Executive Managing Director of CGIAR, a global agricultural research network, Dr Ismahane Elouafi, has praised the achievements of Access Agriculture in reaching farmers, including women and youth, in remote rural areas of Egypt.  Access Agriculture worked with the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) and...

Waterlogging and shallow groundwater (GW) have caused many environmental problems in many places worldwide due to poor irrigation and nonfunctional drainage systems, particularly with flood irrigation (Ochoa et al., 2007, Zhang et al., 2021). The groundwater depth (GWD) is often considered an essential factor in controlling ET rates (Devitt et al., 2002). Consequently, higher ET rates...

Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) and tomato (S. lycopersicum L.) are the most economically important vegetable crops in Egypt and worldwide. The winter crop in Egypt is particularly prone to late blight caused by Phytophthora infestans. A total of 152 P. infestans isolates were isolated from the 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2018 winter crops with 82 isolates...

Access to clean and safe water is a prerequisite to meeting basic human rights. Water is essential for all productive activities in Egypt in the agricultural sector and related sectors, including industry, trade and energy generation. Agriculture is a key sector in the Egyptian economy, contributing 11.3 percent to the...

The Family Farming Knowledge Platform in collaboration with the Barefoot Guide Connection organized a series of “writeshops”, writing classes to support practitioners to write their own experience, generating knowledge which highlight the practices, changes, innovations and impacts of what they do in support of family farming. These writeshops represented an opportunity...

An article titled ‘Innovating digital extension delivery services in rural Egypt,’ featured in the latest issue of the GIZ Sector Network Rural Development (SNRD) Africa newsletter, showcases a partnership project that successfully supports the co-construction of knowledge and inclusive growth for marginalised farmers through farmer-to-farmer videos and last-mile delivery in...

The economic contribution of women to agricultural and irrigation activities and to the livelihoods, well-being and food security of families and communities is often unrecognized, invisible and mostly undervalued. Moreover, the role of women in fetching, preserving and managing productive and non-productive water often goes unrecognized and understudied. This assessment...

Nawaya-Egypt works with small-scale farming families on programmes that focus on ecological farming practices and heritage food systems through a community-based network. It helps rural communities set up enterprises that generate new sources of income for rural communities from making compost to raising poultry and agro-tourism.

Where there is water, there is life. A reliable source of clean water is necessary to grow nutritious food and to lead a healthy life. But climate change is wreaking havoc on rainfall patterns and causing surface water to be lost to evaporation. Sometimes there is not enough water, and other...

We were launching a rural tourism project just as the Covid-19 pandemic startled the world. How ironic, after waiting years for funding for our local organization Nawaya, we were incapable to do basic fieldwork. We were excited and decided not to delay important work. As we were unable to meet...

As collective irrigation canals deteriorate over time, farmers waste resources and efforts in simple daily tasks. With increasing scarcity and degradation of water quality, farmers must pay attention to improve water use.

With its 55.5 billion cubic meters of annual water allocation, Egypt's Nile River accounts for 98% of all available freshwater - 85% of which is captured by farmers to irrigate their crops. But a combination of population growth and worsening climate change conditions means that farmers' water needs exceed what...

Food system transformation is needed to address the hundreds of millions of people without adequate access to food or water for a healthy life. Nutrition and malnutrition are closely linked to water for food, sanitation and hygiene. With 30 percent of the world’s population living in water-stressed environments, the impacts...

Legumes are important in crop rotations, because they reduce weeds and enrich the soil by partnering with nitrogen-fixing bacteria in the soil. To be sure your soil has the right bacteria, you can buy an inoculant of Rhizobium bacteria. Rhizobium bacteria can survive several years in your soil, so you...

Twenty-eight young entrepreneurs, including 10 women, from Egypt representing 16 teams successfully completed their training in the use of a solar-powered smart projector kit containing a library of farmer-training videos. Each team had won this smart device through a selection process as part of Access Agriculture’s Young Entrepreneur Challenge Fund...