A significant man-made river project, considered the world’s largest irrigation endeavor, is set to undergo a new £5.1 billion development phase. The Great Man-Made River (GMMR) is an impressive engineering achievement in the African desert, designed to transport ancient waters to a water-scarce North African country facing challenges due to its harsh climate.
Covering the entire territory of Libya, the Great Man-Made River Project aims to access “fossil water” from a vast underground reservoir known as the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System (NSAS), believed to date back to the ice age.
Situated beneath the Sahara Desert and parts of Libya, Egypt, Chad, and Sudan, the NSAS is one of the oldest and largest aquifers on Earth, holding vast freshwater reserves.
Discovered during oil exploration in 1953, Libya developed plans for the GMMR around a decade later in the late 1960s. Financed by the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who described it as the “eighth wonder of the world,” the project reportedly had a budget of $25 billion (£18.5 billion).
The immense budget corresponds to the vast quantities of materials required for the project, with enough raw materials estimated to build “20 Great Pyramids of Giza.” The Great Man-Made River Authority (GMMRA) indicates the use of approximately five million tonnes of cement and steel wires long enough to circle the Earth 280 times.
Divided into five major phases, the first completed in August 1991, the GMMRA’s operational pipelines span 1,750 miles, with 2,485 miles currently in various stages of completion, boasting a daily water capacity of around 1.7 billion gallons.
As of December 2025, three decades later, the fifth phase is nearing completion. Laura Martin Sanjuan of Diario AS reports that this phase is estimated to cost $7 billion and will extend coverage to rural and northern areas that are currently unconnected.
However, challenges such as the 2011 civil war, leading to reduced public funding, power supply issues, infrastructure damage, and difficulties in importing spare parts have hindered progress.
Designed to supply water to Libya’s densely populated coastal regions, the GMMR offers a cost-effective alternative to overexploited coastal aquifers and expensive desalination processes, as highlighted by Newsweek’s Hugh Cameron.
The GMMRA views the project as critical and strategic, potentially being the primary solution to Libya’s water scarcity issues for drinking, irrigation, and industrial purposes.
Concerns over economic sustainability arise from the gap between production costs and consumer prices, with the non-renewable nature of the resource raising worries about potential depletion within this century.