The Minister of Communications and Information Technology Yasser ElKady and the ITU Secretary-General Houlin Zhao have signed the draft document for the “smart underwater management” project during the Global Symposium for Regulators (GSR) 2016, hosted in Egypt on May 11-14.

The project is in line with the growing international and regional attention for smart management of water where Egypt is particularly interested in line with the government’s ambitious plan for the reclamation of one and a half million acres.

Implemented by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) in cooperation with the Ministry of Defense and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the project aims to utilize ICTs to develop a system for smart management of groundwater used for irrigation to support investors and farmers, as well as improving irrigation management through the identification of sufficient quantity and quality of appropriate water in order to achieve optimal use of water resources. Sensors’ data on the most appropriate water quantities and periods for irrigation will be displayed through a portal that will be created and run by MCIT.

Egypt is the first county cooperating with the ITU—the specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) that is responsible for issues that concern information and communication technologies—to execute a project on smart management of underwater and clean and sustainable energy to protect the environment and raise countries’ awareness for the importance of preserving diverse resources for future generations.

The project is to be implemented in one of the one-and-a-half million acres project’s farms to achieve the smart management of groundwater in the reclaimed land.