Morocco’s answer to drought is in the ocean. Could more of Africa follow its lead? | CNN

As the world enters an era of “water bankruptcy” and much of it is forced to adapt to a hotter, drier future, both cities and farms could increasingly rely on desalination — turning seawater into fresh water. There were more than 22,000 desalination plants operating globally in 2024, mostly in the Middle East and North Africa — the world’s most water-scarce regions. A growing number of African nations are betting on the technology, and by 2030, Morocco wants to get 60% of its drinking water from the ocean. The country declared an end to a seven-year drought in January, after a winter of heavy rain refilled reservoirs that had fallen to historic lows. But the relief did not change Morocco’s long-term strategy. “Relying exclusively on rainfall and dam inflows is no longer sufficient,” Nizar Baraka, Morocco’s minister of equipment and water, told CNN. Drought, he added, is no longer “an exceptional or temporary phenomenon. What we are witnessing is a structural transformation of the climate cycle.” Morocco’s plan is to turn the Atlantic into fresh water to drink and irrigate crops in coastal cities, while dam water and rainfall will flow inland, to the farms an