China’s smart water-conserving technology exported to Egypt

The recent seminar on the further joint building of the Belt and Road by China and Egypt was held in Cairo. It has been five years since the the Belt and Road initiative was put forward, and China-Egypt bilateral cooperation has seen fruitful results. With the continuous promotion of the BRI, the China-Arab States Technology Transfer Center (hereinafter referred to as CASTTC) responded to the rally by actively introducing relevant policies, and promoting the development of IoT technology in agriculture. As a leading enterprise in the R&D, integration, application and promotion of smart agricultural technologies in Ningxia, West China Electronic Business Company (hereinafter referred to as “West China Electronic”), together with Egypt, the UAE and other Arab states have reached a number of agricultural technology and agricultural IoT technology transfers, and has carried out technical exchanges and cooperation through the joint establishment of agricultural IoT demonstration bases and smart agricultural labs, etc., so as to promote the application of key technologies and equipment of IoT in agriculture, as well as modern smart water conservation in Ningxia to other countries, offering effective solutions to the local technical agricultural problems in Egypt, the UAE and other Arab states.

West China Electronic and the Academy of Agricultural Sciences of Aswan University in Egypt have jointly carried out in-depth cooperation in various ways, including the joint establishment of agricultural IoT demonstration bases and agricultural IoT labs, as well as the promotion and application of IoT technologies in agriculture. In December 2018, the two sides co-established the first promotion and application base in Egypt for IoT technology in agriculture, and implemented a smart agricultural water-conserving project, which mainly targets the application of water-conserving irrigation technologies in the planting process of mangoes. With internet access, the water absorption in the growth of mangoes and the effective rainfall and evaporation in the environment can be monitored remotely in real time, thus the water demand can be analyzed. Strategies including preset irrigation, rotational irrigation and smart irrigation can be developed through the precise testing of the environment, realizing an irrigation with precision up to 30% of water conservation, thus effectively boosting the utilization efficiency for water in the field planting process of mangoes.

The completion of the smart water-conserving project for field crops of Aswan University is another successful cooperation between West China Electronic and Arab states in the promotion and transfer of smart agricultural technologies after the water-conserving projects in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. In the future, the company will continue to strengthen the exchange of smart agricultural technologies with Arab states, and take the projects in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Egypt as models to extend to other countries along the Belt and Road, continuously exporting key technologies in smart agriculture from China, and improving the technological application of IoT in the agricultural sector of Arab states, which provides strong support to the development and key breakthroughs of IoT technology in agriculture, as well as its application and promotion in countries along the Belt and Road.