Kenya-Israel partnership will make the country water secure

NAIROBI: “Over 3,000 years ago not many kilometres from West of Kibbutz Kalia near the Dead Sea, the Children of Israel crossed River Jordan into the promised Land”, a land flowing with milk and honey but not water where rainfall is about 40 mm a year. These are the words of Amb Gil Haskel, the former Israeli Ambassador to Kenya as he addressed the Kenyan delegation led by President Uhuru Kenyatta as we visited Kenyan students in the desert.

But over the years, the Israelis have turned Israel from chronically water insecure country to a water/food secure and surplus country exporting water and food to Jordan and Palestine. Amb Gil, who is also the Head of MASHAV that is in charge of Foreign Aid, and Hon Uri Ariel, the Israeli Minister for Agriculture, told us that Israel changed its water and food fortunes after realising that rain-fed agriculture was not sustainable and turned to irrigated agriculture. Israel stopped waiting for rain and water from the Sea of Galilee and turned salty water of the Mediterranean Sea and through desalination plants at Sorek, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Hadeira, Palmichim and waste-water re-cycling gave its citizens millions of cubic metres of water in excess of their needs.