Egypt’s industrial ambitions increasingly face a constraint that cannot be solved simply by building more factories: water. The country faces an annual water deficit of about 23.2bn cubic metres, according to Water Resources and Irrigation Minister Hani Sewilam. The initiative builds on plans to introduce water-footprint standards assessing consumption alongside economic value added. Egypt’s environmental framework already encourages factories to reduce consumption, treat industrial wastewater and reuse it in production, including zero-liquid-discharge systems where technically and economically feasible. It is the economic value generated per unit of water after accounting for the cost of achieving that efficiency.