Agricultural Engineer / Permaculture Designer / Innovator

Taleb Brahim is an award-winning Saharawi agricultural engineer, a permaculture designer, an innovator and a refugee. He is the founder of Algaada Centre for Agricultural Research and Experimentation in Samara Camp. Since he was 6 years old, he has lived with his family in the Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria, in a desert where sandstorms are common, temperatures in summer are very high and in the winter very low. It rarely rains; the soil is eroded and not fertile and water is scarce. These unfavourable agricultural conditions led to an almost total dependence on food aid from the international community.  Taleb teamed up with WFP Algeria, the WFP Innovation Accelerator in Munich and OXFAM to test H2Grow hydroponics in the camps. Taleb was inspired to develop a local adaptation: low-tech hydroponics. In so doing, he managed to bring down the cost and increase production in comparison to the original high-tech version. These low-tech units are cheap, built with local materials, easy to use, easy to repair and easy to replicate.
Over time, Taleb developed different types of low-tech units, always keeping in mind the refugees’ specific needs and the context. It has become a project that is created by refugees, implemented by refugees, and benefiting refugees. Over 1,200 refugees were trained on how to use the hydroponics units. Taleb has since worked with WFP and Oxfam to replicate and adapt H2Grow hydroponics to different locations and contexts such as other refugee camps and schools in nine different countries including Chad, Jordan, Palestine, Libya, Kenya, Peru, Namibia and Zambia. Today over 26,000 people are benefiting from H2Grow.