Tens of thousands of Sahrawi refugees living in camps close to Tindouf in southwest Algeria face severe constraints on growing food. The arid environment provides little agricultural land or water, while families depend heavily on livestock such as goats and camels for food and income. In 2016, Sahrawi agricultural engineer Taleb Brahim began experimenting with hydroponics after seeing how the technique could grow fresh fodder with little water. In March 2017, he presented the idea to the World Food Programme's Innovation Accelerator, which selected it for further development. WFP staff in Algeria then worked with Brahim, the Innovation Accelerator, and Oxfam to develop and test low-tech hydroponic units built with locally available materials. Rethinking nearly every tenet of traditional farming was necessary to get that system to function consistently in desert environments.
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