Middle East and North Africa Water Intelligence Brief — April 2026

What's New? Turkey's National Water Plan (2026–2035) was approved by presidential decree and published in the Official Gazette on 14 March. The plan sets out 8 goals, 31 strategies, and 141 actions covering flood-water capture, irrigation modernization, groundwater monitoring, and wastewater treatment expansion.

Why It Matters: Agriculture consumes roughly 79 percent of Turkey's water, and the country is already classified as water-stressed. The plan establishes a legally binding framework for reducing network losses to 25 percent by 2030 and per-capita consumption to 120 liters per day, with implications for downstream Euphrates–Tigris flows.

What's Next? Authorities will expand satellite-based tracking of agricultural water use, develop a national flood forecast and early warning system by 2030, and deploy floating solar plants on reservoirs to curb evaporation.

What's New? Nama Power and Water Procurement Company unveiled plans for the North Batinah IWP (150,000 m³/day, operational by 2032) and the Dhofar Water IWP 2030 (80,000 m³/day, operational around 2030) in its latest 7-Year Outlook Statement, signaling a major capacity expansion.

Why It Matters: Peak water demand in Oman's Main Interconnected System is projected to grow 3 percent annually, reaching approximately 1,483,000 m³/day by 2032. The new projects will supplement the 300,000 m³/day Ghubrah III IWP already under construction and due online in 2027.

What's Next? Procurement begins once the Pre-Investment Appraisal Documents receive regulatory approval. Nama PWP is coordinating site selection with Nama Water Services for North Batinah and conducting a hydrological study for the Dhofar project at Raysut.

What's New? A Saudi Water Authority report, prepared with Oliver Wyman, confirmed that the Kingdom plans to build over 10,000 km of new water transmission pipelines by 2030, with an investment of close to $30 billion — representing about 90 percent of the region's total transmission spend.

Why It Matters: Saudi Arabia meets 70 percent of its water needs through desalination across 32 plants at 17 locations, and national demand is expected to reach nearly 18 million m³/day by 2030. The pipeline program is critical for distributing desalinated water inland and building system redundancy following the March targeting of desalination plants in the Gulf.

What's Next? The priority is execution discipline — accelerating tenders, maintaining bankable procurement, and broadening the investable pipeline. Sharakat, formerly the Saudi Water Partnership Company, already has more than $11 billion in PPP projects under development.

What It Does: KAHRAMAA, Qatar's national water and electricity utility, launched the Aqua-Intelligence innovation challenge to deploy AI-powered smart meters that continuously monitor pH, turbidity, chlorine, and conductivity across District Metered Areas, replacing reactive lab-based sampling with 24/7 predictive dashboards and real-time contamination alerts.

Why It Matters: Qatar currently lacks continuous water quality management across its network. This initiative shifts monitoring from periodic laboratory analysis to proactive, AI-driven intelligence, strengthening public health protection and enabling data-informed resource planning aligned with Qatar National Vision 2030.

Strategic Impact: Successful deployment would establish a scalable model for real-time water quality governance across GCC utility networks, improve customer confidence through transparent quality data, and position Qatar as a regional leader in digitally integrated water operations.

What It Does: Saudi Arabia is advancing hybrid systems that pair solar photovoltaic generation with battery and thermal energy storage to power desalination plants, enabling renewable output to be shifted to evening and overnight peak demand periods — particularly during seasonal consumption surges when daily water distribution exceeds 11 million cubic meters.

Why It Matters: With desalination supplying 70 percent of Saudi Arabia's drinking water, coupling solar energy — now at 11.9 gigawatts of installed capacity — with storage directly addresses the energy intensity of water production while reducing grid pressure, emissions, and operational costs during demand peaks.

Strategic Impact: Hybrid solar-storage desalination offers a replicable model for decarbonizing water production across arid regions, lowering lifecycle costs and building operational flexibility as the Kingdom scales toward its 2030 target of nearly 18 million cubic meters of daily water demand.

SAFEX, Pins Maritimes, Algiers, Algeria. North Africa's flagship water, energy, and environment exhibition has run since 2005 and convenes more than 200 exhibitors alongside public, private, and institutional stakeholders focused on climate-resilient infrastructure and sustainable resource management.