A significant man-made river, believed to be the largest irrigation project globally, is set to undergo further expansion with a new £5.1 billion development phase. The Great Man-Made River (GMMR) is an impressive engineering accomplishment in the African desert, designed to transport ancient waters to a water-scarce North African country due to its harsh climate.
Spanning across the entirety of Libya, the Great Man-Made River Project aims to utilize “fossil water” from a vast underground reservoir known as the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System (NSAS), dating back to the previous ice age.
The NSAS, situated beneath the Sahara Desert and parts of Libya, Egypt, Chad, and Sudan, is one of the oldest and largest aquifers on Earth, holding significant freshwater reserves.
Discovered during oil exploration in 1953, plans for the GMMR began to take shape in the late 1960s. Financed by the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, the project was dubbed the “eighth wonder of the world” with an estimated budget of $25 billion (£18.5 billion).
The enormous scale of the project is reflected in the materials required, with enough resources to construct “20 Great Pyramids of Giza.” The Great Man-Made River Authority (GMMRA) estimates utilizing around five million tonnes of cement and steel wires long enough to circle the earth 280 times.
Divided into five major phases, the GMMR’s functional pipelines cover 1,750 miles, with an additional 2,485 miles in various stages of completion, boasting a daily water capacity of approximately 1.7 billion gallons.
As of December 2025, the fifth phase is nearing completion after three decades. This phase, estimated to cost $7 billion, aims to extend coverage to rural and northern areas currently without access.
Challenges faced during the project’s progression include setbacks from the 2011 civil war, leading to funding cuts, power outages, infrastructure damage, and difficulties in obtaining spare parts.
The GMMR was developed to provide water to Libya’s densely populated coastal regions, offering a sustainable alternative to the overexploited coastal aquifers and costly desalination processes.
Deemed “of crucial and strategic nature” by the Great Man-Made River Authority (GMMRA), the project is seen as the key solution to Libya’s water scarcity issues for drinking, irrigation, and industrial purposes.
However, concerns regarding the economic sustainability of the project have been raised, with a gap between production costs and consumer pricing, highlighting the non-renewable nature of the resource. Estimates suggest that water supplies may deplete within this century.
