Regional Workshop to Advance Best Management Practices Scenarios in Egypt and Sudan

Continuing its commitment to regional engagement and evidence-based validation, the Climate Smart Water Management and Sustainable Development for Food and Agriculture in East Africa (WATDEV) project, funded by the European Union through the DeSIRA Initiative, held a Regional Workshop on 1st December 2025 at SEKEM Farm in Belbies, Egypt. The event was jointly organised by the local partner, Heliopolis University (HU) in collaboration with ASARECA, CIHEAM-Bari, and in the presence of AICS Cairo.

Approximately 50 participants attended the workshop, including researchers, decision-makers, government officials, water experts, local stakeholders and the project consortium. Together they engaged in in-depth discussions to refine and validate the Best Management Practices (BMPs) scenarios selected in Egypt and Sudan, and to develop implementation pathways aligned with local needs, constraints, and priorities.

Despite the critical situation in their country, the WRC team continues to actively contribute to WATDEV. During the workshop, they fully participated in discussions, shared insights from the Sudanese context, and collaborated to validate the BMPs scenarios selected in Sudan.

The Regional Workshop focused on participatory validation of the BMPs intervention scenarios at the basin level in Egypt and in Sudan. It opened with welcoming remarks from Prof. Wael Khairy, Heliopolis University, who emphasized the strong collaborative spirit that drives WATDEV. This was followed by Mr. Moses Odeke, Interim head of Programme at ASARECA, who highlighted the workshop as a pivotal moment in the WATDEV implementation towards advancing sustainable water management solutions. Dr. Gaetano Ladisa, WATDEV Project Manager at CIHEAM-Bari, further underscored how integrated management of water, soil, and crops, aligned with territorial and socio-economic contexts, is essential for sustainable resource use. He also highlighted WATDEV???s multi-actor, multi-scale participatory approach, where the scientific modelling and local knowledge develop together practical, scalable, and climate-resilient solutions.

Following these remarks, participants were introduced to the WATDEV project progress through a presentation by Ms. Concetta Bianco, WATDEV Project Coordinator at AICS Cairo. She showcased the recent achievements and outlined the upcoming implementation steps, reinforcing the value of multi-country collaboration in generating shared climate-smart water management solutions.

To ensure a common understanding of how stakeholder insights have informed the modelling work, Dr. Jantiene Baartman from ISRIC explained the methodology used to simulate BMP scenarios at the basin level. She detailed how data from previous field engagements was translated into modelling inputs and described the assumptions underpinning the scenario simulations.

A key highlight of the workshop was a detailed presentation of the simulated BMPs scenarios, delivered by PhD. student Samar Gomaa from ISRIC. She walked participants through each of the three simulated BMP in Egypt, manuring, intercropping, and Water Users??? Association (WUA), explaining the benefit of each BMP. The key achievements her presentation illustrated were how WUA model can significantly reduce irrigation water use; how manuring can enhance soil fertility and boost overall production; and how intercropping optimizes land use by combining different crops and trees for higher-quality outputs. This was followed with an interactive Q&A session allowing participants to actively engage to clarify modelling assumptions and discuss expected impacts of each scenario.

The presentation of the BMP scenarios in Sudan was shared by the PhD. student Mohamed Barsi, from ISRIC, in a preliminary online meeting held with the Sudanese partner WRC, ISRIC, CIHEAM Bari and ASARECA and which aimed at providing the Sudanese partner with the needed information to participate in this Regional Workshop in Egypt.

Participants were later divided into groups to deeply discuss and assess the proposed scenarios, facilitated by the modelling team members and Heliopolis University. This interactive session enabled stakeholders to assess scenario feasibility, identify enabling factors, implementation challenges and highlight opportunities for scenario refinement.

After the conclusion of the collective discussion on the validation of BMPs scenarios, Ms. Silvia Lecci from CIHEAM Bari led a survey on water management policy improvements. The survey aimed to capture stakeholders??? views on how WATDEV modelling toolbox could directly or indirectly support better policy and governance frameworks for agricultural water management in Egypt and Sudan.

The workshop concluded with a comprehensive synthesis session summarizing main insights, recommendations and scenario refinements gathered from the participatory discussions. Participants were also presented with a clear roadmap showcasing how their contributions will be incorporated into the next round of basin-level simulations under the WATDEV framework.

In essence, the Regional Workshop in Egypt marked a significant advancement for the WATDEV project. The integration of modelling and active stakeholder engagement ensured that the BMP scenarios developed are both scientifically sound and firmly rooted in local realities and institutional contexts. This collaborative approach enhances the strength of the WATDEV modelling toolbox and contributes to the development of more resilient, sustainable, and context-appropriate agricultural water management strategies across Eastern Africa.

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Ude Kebele groundwater irrigation scheme under the Adaa Becho Groundwater Irrigation system (ABGIS) in the Awash Basin

It is a new intervention area with perspectives to be expanded. It is therefore envisaged that the lessons from other countries could be scaled out in this area.

Ada’a-Becho Groundwater Irrigation (ABGIS) is located in Ada’a Wereda some 50 km from Addis Ababa. The Adama road passes nearby the scheme and has no access limitation.  This scheme is part of Ada’a-Bacho Irrigation Development Project that comprises three conjugate Kebeles (i.e., Dhankaka, Ude and Qallitty) in Ada’a District of East Shawa Zone, Oromia Regional State.

The Ude Kebele Groundwater Irrigation Site is small, scheme selected to demonstrate groundwater irrigation practice demonstration sites as it is new irrigation development area will be a learning site for a medium scale community owned groundwater irrigation development in Ethiopia.

ABGIS landscape is one of the low reliefs that slopes gently north-west and south east wards. Apart from close to the hills virtually all slopes are nearly less than 3- 4%, with the majority of the slopes of 0-2%. 

The climatic variables of the project area are highly governed by the topography of the area (mainly altitude). The highland area lies at an altitude of over 2300 m asl and covers 17.5% of the project area. Mean annual temperature of this part of the project area ranges from 12.50C to 160C.

The major crops produced include Teff, chick pea, wheat, barley, vetch, and maize.  Few farmers also produce tomato and onion as cash crops. Crop production in the area is by and large rain-dependent. But in few farmers produce vegetables twice a year using pumped water from Mojo and Waddecha rivers.

The problems in ABGIS are connected with the limited experience in fruit crop production.

Koga Irrigation System (KIS) in the Abbay Basin

KIS is an established and relatively well performing irrigation scheme in Ethiopia. In here besides Irrigation water management, there are also success stories in watershed management.

Koga is located some 40 km from Bahri Dar town (Regional capital of Amhara Regional State. The  Bahir Dar –Addis Ababa highway passes through the scheme (Fig 2), hence the scheme is year round accessible.

Koga irrigation system comprises of 19.7 km of lined main canal, 52 km of lined secondary canals, 156 km of unlined tertiary canals, 905 km of unlined quaternary canals and 11 lined Night Storage Reservoirs (NSRs). The main canal was designed to provide irrigation water for 24 h during irrigation period.

There are 12 secondary canals designed for 12 h irrigation supply each covering an area of irrigated land ranging from 220 ha to over 1000 ha. Tertiary canals are designed for 12 h irrigation supply. The area irrigated by a tertiary canal range between 20 ha to 65 ha. The quaternary canals have a capacity of irrigating 8–16 ha of land while field canals will serve an area of 2.0 ha within the quaternary unit. The maximum field canal design capacity is 30 l/s.

KIS is the best performing among many community-managed irrigation schemes. Unlike other schemes this was designed and developed as an integrated watershed and irrigation development project.

Among the problems associated to the KIS are Seasonal water shortage and associated conflicts between Irrigation water user associations, low irrigation water application efficiency, catchment degradation. In order to increase water productivity in the KIS, water saving technologies will be promoted.

The Gezira irrigation scheme

The Gezira Scheme is located between the Blue Nile and the White Nile Rivers within a semi-arid agro-climatic zone. In terms of accessibility, it is easily accessible by Wad Medani road and the trip between Wad Medani, the capital of the Gezira State and headquarter of the scheme (Barakat), and Khartoum takes about three hours. The scheme is one of the largest irrigation schemes in the region with 880,000 hectares (ha). It is one of the main sources of foreign currency (cotton export), and food security (wheat, sorghum, vegetables) for Sudan. It has huge infrastructure with a value estimated at about US $ 8 billion. The scheme had played a vital role in the history of irrigation in Sudan and Africa and has become a model for many irrigation schemes in sub-Saharan Africa in terms of design and operation system. Therefore, any research aiming at improving water management in Gezira scheme is not only beneficial to the project, but also to similar projects at national and regional scale.  There are many challenges that the scheme face and urgent need to investigate Best Management Practices (BMPs) that  can overcome these challenges and enhance productivity. Some of these challenges are deterioration of irrigation infrastructure, inefficient water distribution within the scheme, agricultural drainage discharges directly in the Blue Nile without treatment impacting water quality, institutional weakness and instability.

Belbies district

Belbies district is located 20 km south of El Zagazig city between Long. 31o 24′ and 31o 39′ E and Lat. 30o 19′ and 30o 29′ N. It is bounded at the east by Abu Hammad, at the west by Minia El Kammh and in the south by the Tenth of Ramadan City districts.

As a part of the east Nile Delta, Belbies district constitutes a portion of an arid belt of north Egypt. It is characterized by a long dry summer and short temperate winter with a rainfall period from October to March. The climate is hot in summer; the average temperature is in the range of 19.7oC and 34.7oC, while during winter it ranges from 7.4oC and 18.4oC.

Due to intensive agricultural practice, which involves the application of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, many soils and shallow aquifers are contaminated. Consequently, pollution of groundwater has become a major concern in recent years. Wastewater disposed in canals can diffuse in groundwater. Overexploitation of groundwater and intensive irrigation in major canal commands has posed serious problems for groundwater managers in Nile Delta e.g. Sharkia governorate. The development of groundwater resources, technology-oriented management skills, adequate and efficient groundwater monitoring system, empowerment of women in unprivileged areas are among the challenges to be addressed. Indeed, water management projects are one of the priority topics in the political agenda of Egypt.