The world’s biggest man-made river stretches 7,500 miles and cost £400 million to build

The aim is to provide a steady supply of drinking water for the country’s fast-growing population.

A country in the Middle East could soon rival the Nile, as it works on building the longest man-made river in the world.

The King Salman Water Conveyance Project in Saudi Arabia will cost £400 million and will stretch 7,500 miles. It will be 11 metres wide and four metres deep.

The project also includes laying down 78,292 miles of special anti-rust pipes—long enough to go around the Earth three times.

The goal is to make sure people in Saudi Arabia have a reliable and long-term source of clean drinking water.

Once complete, the river will be one of the biggest fresh water systems in the world, able to supply 9.4 million cubic metres of water every day.

Saudi Arabia has mostly depended on desalination—removing salt from seawater—to provide drinking water.

That’s because a lot of the natural groundwater in the country is used for farming.

In fact, Saudi Arabia is the world’s top producer of desalinated water, creating over one billion cubic metres every year.

The country doesn’t have any rivers that flow all year round, but it does have dry riverbeds called wadis.

The longest of these is Wadi al-Rummah, which is 373 miles long, but it only flows fully about three times every hundred years.

Saudi Arabia is one of the biggest countries in the world without a permanent river.

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