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january/february 2009 EDITORIAL News
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Forcefully flows the Nile: downstreamThe Nile River, Africa’s water tower and longest in the world, is a source of ongoing tension between Ethiopia - the source of this historic waterway - and Egypt, the primary beneficiary of this biblical wonder. The Nile is so precious to Egypt, with 95 per cent of its people living along or near its banks, that former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat once threatened war if Ethiopia interfered with the Blue Nile – the branch of the Nile that originates in Ethiopia and flows through Sudan and Egypt to the Mediterranean Sea. (The other main branch of the Nile, the White Nile, originates in Lake Victoria – a lake shared by Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda.) “The Nile continues to be the main focus of public discourse, including the media and government,” Tamrat said in an interview. He once served as a lead negotiator for Ethiopia on the Nile. Egypt, where 98 per cent of its land is covered by dessert, has 64 million of its people living on four per cent of its land. A study commissioned by the United States Agency for International Development predicts that Egypt will experience a 16 to 30 per cent water deficit by the end of this century. In many federations, much of the onus on water management is on the subnational orders of government while the central government works out how to best manage the trans-regional rivers and lakes within the federation. Other than a 1959 treaty which allocates all the water to two countries, Egypt getting 55.5 billion cubic metres of water annually and 18.5 billion cubic metres going to Sudan – there is no formal water- sharing agreement between the 10 countries in the Nile River Basin. “Many countries on the basin share our views on how to utilize the Nile water,” Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia said at a convention of the ruling EPRDF party in September. “There are differences with Egypt, though, which I believe are a matter of negotiations.” But serious efforts, which show great promise, have been deployed by all Nile Basin countries to get on side. The 10 Nile countries have been working since 1999 on what is known as the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI). The initiative serves as a platform to help countries along the basin transform their relationships from confrontation to co-operation, thereby building mutual trust and confidence through executing joint projects; and will continue until such time that there is a comprehensive deal signed on sharing the Nile water. The World Bank is managing a multi-donor trust fund to finance the first phase of investment projects under the NBI, the costs of which have been estimated at $3 billion. In fact, the first investments are already in progress, including irrigation projects in Ethiopia and Egypt, an integrated water resources development project for the Tana and Beles basin in Ethiopia, and the connection of the national electricity grids of Ethiopia and Sudan, in order for Ethiopia to sell surplus hydro power to its neighbour. Tamrat said the Nile initiative has a clear goal. “The basic objective of the Initiative is not to allocate the volumetric of the water.” “It is to share the benefit of the resources. There will be a joint irrigation system. Food production can be shared by both. Watershed management and environmental issues are also included in the initiative.” His prime minister sums it up succinctly: the initiative is not an agreement on water sharing in itself; but this is a possibility further down the road. |
Tamarat G. Giorgis is the managing editor of Fortune, Ethiopia’s largest circulation business weekly.
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