Egypt plans to 'green' Sahara desert

The Egyptian government is keen to encourage people to move to the desert by pressing ahead with an estimated $US70 billion ($A77.7 billion) plan to reclaim 3.4 million acres of desert over the next 10 years. Among the incentives are cheap desert land to college graduates. But to make these areas habitable and capable of cultivation, the government will need to tap into scarce water resources of the Nile River as rainfall is almost non-existent in Egypt.

Egypt's project to reclaim deserts in the south, called "Toshka", would expand Egypt's farmland by about 40 per cent by 2017, using about five billion cubic metres of water a year.