Somaliland's pastoral communities face chronic drought and food insecurity. Seawater Greenhouse Ltd, in partnership with the Pastoral and Environmental Network in the Horn of Africa (PENHA) and Aston University, developed a deliberately simplified and low-cost variant of the seawater greenhouse concept — a shade net system rather than a fully enclosed greenhouse — to maximize affordability and community ownership. Construction completed in 2017 and the facility began producing its first crops.

Rather than a full enclosed greenhouse, the Berbera system uses a shade net structure that retains the evaporative cooling core of the technology while dramatically reducing construction cost and complexity. Powered by solar PV and using seawater from the nearby coast, it creates a cooler, more humid microclimate that allows vegetables including tomatoes and cucumbers to grow year-round despite the extreme heat. The system produces its own fresh water from seawater condensation.

The greenhouses are operational and producing crops. The project has demonstrated that a simplified, low-cost variant of the seawater greenhouse can be deployed in humanitarian contexts and is replicable across other drought-affected coastal communities. This simplified design opens up a vast addressable geography in East Africa and the Horn of Africa.