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Climate changes are everywhere, droughts, water security, and food security are in the top of global and regional agendas, but how can we secure them? Is it possible to do so in a manner that is sustainable while ticking the right economics for the business stakeholders and being equitable to beneficiaries at the same time?
Such compounded challenges require a multidisciplinary innovative approach, and that’s where we come in.
At Engazaat, harnessing the power of tech and social entrepreneurship since 2010, we enable sustainable agriculture even in desert environments at an accelerated pace via a distinctive industry-first “Energy-and-Water-As-a-Service-Model”, with zero CAPEX, and Zero burden of operating the water and energy utility/infrastructure, following a disruptive "Pay as You Go" financing model.
In the case of Egypt, where urban expansion into arable lands pushed agriculture into the desert, where water and energy are challenged and off-grid, we have implemented our flagship “SAVE-1.0” project development in 2022 – a 10 million USD project that is in operational stage, phase-1 of which is 2,200 acres of land out of 15,000 acres in total.
SAVE-1.0 project has uniquely integrated various complex and innovative smart and clean technologies that are second to none all working towards powering water utilities through solar energy sources to produce food efficiently with the least levelized cost of water/energy, and least environmental footprint. The result?
- Addressing 10+ UN Sustainable Development Goals at once
- A total transformation of the 2,200 acres of land from “yellow to green” in less than a year
- Accessible clean energy, and clean water utility of 75% reduction in cost
- Offsetting 42,500 tonnes of CO2 emissions over project’s lifetime
- A successful case of public-private-partnership in MEA in the Water/Energy/Food Nexus
Here are quick facts to highlight the pain-point we are addressing through our innovation in “Energy & Sustainability” solar-for-water-farmer-centric-developments, and hence, the potentiality of scaling-up:
- 95% of farmers base in Egypt are smallholder farmers unable to afford high capital expenses of establishing sustainable energy/water infrastructure (investment barrier), nor do they have the knowledge for it (cultural barrier)
- 80% of water consumption goes to agriculture (through traditional methods)
- 95% of Egypt’s land reclamation stock are off grid
- Egypt imports more than 60% of its main food staples. With the rising turbulence of the global food supply chain post-Covid, and forex challenges, food security and internal food production becomes a pressing priority
The landscape in many countries of MEA is not very different.
Our tagline “Transforming Sahara” sums up our ambition to greenify Sahara through our decentralized and scalable business model.
Nomination Title: Engazaat's SAVE Project - Innovation in Energy and Sustainability Product Development
