A significant man-made river project, known as the Great Man-Made River (GMMR), is set to undergo a new development phase with a fresh investment of £5.1 billion. This engineering marvel in the African desert is designed to address water scarcity in a North African country by transporting ancient water resources. The project spans the entire territory of Libya and aims to access “fossil water” from the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System (NSAS), a massive underground reservoir dating back to the ice age.
The NSAS, situated beneath the Sahara Desert and regions of Libya, Egypt, Chad, and Sudan, is one of the oldest and largest aquifers on Earth, holding vast freshwater reserves. Discovered during oil exploration in 1953, plans for the GMMR began in the late 1960s under Muammar Gaddafi’s leadership. Gaddafi, the former Libyan dictator, funded the GMMR project with an estimated budget of $25 billion (£18.5 billion), referring to it as the “eighth wonder of the world.”
The scale of the project is immense, requiring large quantities of materials. The GMMR is said to have enough resources to construct “20 Great Pyramids of Giza,” with approximately five million tonnes of cement and steel wires long enough to encircle the earth 280 times. Divided into five phases, the GMMR’s pipelines, spanning 1,750 miles, have a daily water capacity of around 1.7 billion gallons, with ongoing expansion efforts.
The fifth phase of the project, nearing completion as of December 2025, has an estimated cost of $7 billion. This phase will extend water access to rural and northern areas that are currently underserved. Challenges faced during the project include disruptions from the 2011 civil war, reduced public funding, power supply issues, infrastructure damage, and difficulties in importing spare parts.
The GMMR was developed to provide water to Libya’s densely populated coastal regions as an alternative to overused coastal aquifers and costly desalination processes. The Great Man-Made River Authority views the project as crucial for addressing water shortages in Libya for drinking, irrigation, and industrial purposes. Concerns over economic sustainability and the finite nature of the water supply have been raised, with projections indicating potential water depletion within this century.