Nile crisis: Will Africa go to war over water?

Through jungles and dessert, the worlds longest river claims an immense diversity, spanning 6,695kilometers (4184 miles) and creating an unbreakable umbilical code that is the lifeline of the ten countries that share or benefit from its waters.

Power brokers in 10 capitals are holding each other by the neck over the control and usage of the its waters in a crisis that the entire globe feels.

Over the last one month, intense negotiations have been going on in what has been termed as “crisis” talks to avert a potential civil conflict between the countries that owe their living to the Nile.
Ever heard the eternal saying that “Water is Life”? This is one of
its most delicate tests.

The Nile stands at the centre of a bitter row between Egypt on one hand and the nine other countries that share or contribute to its waters under the Nile River Basin.

Burundi, Congo, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania fall under the Nile basin.

Tough language and threats of war and economic sanctions saw the ten countries locked in an emergency meeting in the Ugandan lakeside town of Entebbe recently for a week to renegotiate colonial agreements that bound the countries on the Nile water use.

The meeting of legal and technical experts ended without any breakthrough. It was highly secretive and the press was locked out.

However, according to some reports, progress had been made.

But one negotiator told Sunday Monitor that “what is going on inside there is a bombshell”, he refused to give any further details.

Back Ground to the Conflict

The conflict stems from a one-sided colonial agreement drawn between Britain and Egypt that shared out and bound the other countries on the Nile waters.

In 1929 Britain signed the Nile Basin Treaty with Egypt, pledging on behalf of its colonies not to undertake any works that would reduce the volume of water flowing to Cairo.

Despite the end of the colonial era Egypt considers the treaty to be still binding on Burundi, DR Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Burundi, Tanzania and Uganda.

In 1959, three years after Sudan’s independence and its calls for a fair revision, the treaty was amended.

Section 4 (ii) of the 1929 agreement reads:

“Save with the previous agreements of the Egyptian government, no irrigation or power works or measures are to be constructed or taken on the river Nile and its branches, or on the lakes from which it flows, so far as all these are in the Sudan or countries under British administration, which would in such a manner as to entail any prejudice to the interests of Egypt, either reduce the quantity of water arriving in Egypt or modify the date of its arrival.”

The article, which Egypt has stuck to means that no country can undertake a project of whatever magnitude without the express approval of Egypt. Egypt also has veto powers for any funding from the World Bank if it is to fund such a project.

Revised in 1959, the agreement shared out the Nile waters between Egypt and Sudan.

The total annual discharge of the Nile between Egypt and Sudan was measured at 74 billion cubic meters from which the former was allocated two-thirds — or 55.5 billion cubic meters — with the latter awarded the remaining 18.5 billion cubic meters.

“That means that these two countries shared out the Nile 100 percent, leaving the upper riparian (downstream) countries out though they are the source,” says MP Amon Muzoora (Rwampara County, Mbarara).

He is sponsoring a motion in the Ugandan parliament calling for the nullification of the agreements.

The possibility of open confrontation

Egypt has variously said that any attempt by any of the nine member countries to walk out of the existing agreements would be a declaration of war against it.

The Minister of State for Water Ms Maria Mutagamba, says the prospect of an open conflict should be averted through diplomatic negotiations.

She says the efforts of the Nile Basin Initiative set up in 1999 with headquarters in Uganda is making good progress in a diplomatic resolution to the conflict. All the other countries say they got a raw deal

Defiance

In 1980, Ethiopia, which contributes a huge percentage of the Nile waters, wanted to embark on an ambitious project that would help millions of her starving population get cultivable land though irrigation and hydro power development.

Egypt objected to the plan but Ethiopia insisted. This provoked the then Egyptian President, Anwar Sadat to announce that Ethiopia’s schemes would be deemed as “declaration of war” on Egypt if implemented. After much international “diplomatic warfare” the project failed.

Egypt threatened air strikes two months ago after Tanzania said it was embarking on a Shs 85.1 billion ($85.1 million) project to draw water from Lake Victoria to supply Kahama in Shinyanga region.

The way things are now, if Tanzania goes head with its plans it will be contravening the two colonial treaties controlling the use of water from the lake that Britain signed with Egypt and Sudan.

The water project will initially benefit 420,000 people, but this number is expected to soar to 940,000 in the next 20 years.

The project already underway, is being implemented in phases and phase one which is to cost up to US27 million has already been launched.

Kenya has also embarked on a project to draw water from rivers that flow into Lake Victoria to draw water for irrigation projects.

Kenya is re-examining its allegiance to the 1929 Nile Basin Treaty, which limits its exploitation of Lake Victoria.

Egypt, the chief signatory and beneficiary of this arrangement, labelled Kenya’s position “a declaration of war” and threatened sanctions, using language that suggested that actions to lower the volume of Nile waters reaching Egypt could draw a military response.

The case for Uganda

Unlike other members, Uganda lies 100 percent in the Nile Basin but unfortunately much of the country is still largely poor and large areas of the countryside lack adequate access to water.

The former colonial master, Britain, bound it together with other countries in accepting in the agreement with Egypt.

In 1962 shortly after independence, then Prime Minister, Dr Milton Obote made a pronouncement declaring the 1929 and 1959 agreements on the Nile null and Void.

However, a year later parliament passed a resolution accepting the agreements.

In September 2002 MP Amon Muzooro moved a motion in parliament seeking among other things a review of the relationship between Egypt and Uganda on the Nile.

He argued that the agreements were not only unfair to Uganda but were also eccentric and costly. Muzoora’s motions sparked off a new debate of whether Uganda should “sell” the Nile waters at it exits at Nimule.

Speaking to Sunday Monitor on Wednesday, Muzoora said that Uganda was at the losing end of the bargain and said this can not be allowed to continue. His motion is still under discussion.

President Yoweri Museveni this week said the 1929 agreement that gives Egypt power over the Nile is null and void.

“Those were the British, they were not ourselves,” he said. “Egypt has no right to monopolise the use of the Nile water for irrigation. It cannot deprive others from using it.”

His views were balanced and accommodative because he rejected calls by some Ugandan legislators to sell the water.

Hon. John Odit (Erute South) chairs parliament’s committee on Agriculture. With some colleagues, he was recently invited to Egypt on a trip to study how Egypt uses the Nile waters and how Uganda can benefit. “It is serious,” he said of the threats of going to war.

“It is a security matter all the same; for them they have the military might and they look at water as their only source of life so they are ready to fight,” he said.

“No country would wish to cut off the water completely. No body would wish Egypt to suffer but they cannot expect us to take care of the environment here, not to dig near rivers; the lakes; maintain forests just not to reduce the volume of water flow [just for them],” he said.

Muzoora says that Egypt sometimes uses its strong international connections to suffocate projects linked to the Nile.

In 1991 Uganda wanted to embark on the Owen Falls Dam extension project, in accordance with the 1929 and 1959 agreements Uganda informed all the riparian countries, only Egypt raised an objection until it squeezed a new agreement from Kampala in May 1991.

A parliament investigation notes: “Uganda was pushed into a corner and forced to sign an undertaking conflicting with the earlier position of not recognising the pre-independence agreements, in order to access the World Bank loan for the urgently needed hydropower project. Uganda signed under duress,” a draft report seen by Sunday Monitor says.

There are reports that Egypt also stood in the way of the much hyped $550 million Bujjagali hydropower project.

In the 70s former President Iddi Amin nearly provoked war when he threatened to divert the Nile in a dream project that would turn Karamoja into a Greenland.

Why now

Addressing journalists at Nakasero on Thursday, Mutagamba said the latest upsurge in interest in the Nile is a new realisation of the urgent need for more and more water.

She observes that there are now more urban centres demanding piped water, development of industries and construction works is eating into the wet lands that were once natural water reservoirs.

MP Odit observes that Egypt’s population has more than doubled and thus it’s water needs juts like the rest of the riparains. In 1959, Egypt called for a review of the agreements because her population had grown and it needed more water for irrigating desert land in the Sinai desert.

To create new rice fields, Egypt needed 55.5billion cubic meters then, today the water need might be hitting the 70billion meters and will shoot up to about 90bn in the next few years.

And indeed, one ministry that wields so much power apart from defence in Egypt today is that of Irrigation.

Dr Ian Clark, of the International Air Rescue Hospital in Kampala was part of a recent expedition of the River Nile. He says the Nile crisis is just as important to the power brokers as it is to the poor communities that live along its banks.

After rafting through some of the poorest and war ravaged communities in northern and southern Sudan he said:
“It’s a huge impact that once you get peace and stability, then the next thing is the Nile crisis. Its gonna be on the agenda.”

Clerk says the countries affected must sit down at a conference and agree on the best way resolve the crisis.

Fact file

Length: (From White Nile Source to Mouth) 6,695km (4184 miles). The Nile is the longest river in the world. Only followed by the Amazon of South America at 6437 kilometers.

Name: The Nile gets its name from the Greek word “Nelios”, meaning River Valley.

Sources: The White Nile: Lake Victoria, Uganda. The Blue Nile: Lake Tana, Ethiopia.

Countries effected: The Nile and its tributaries flow though nine countries. Uganda, Sudan, and Egypt. The Blue Nile starts in Ethiopia. Zaire, Kenya, Tanzanian, Rwanda, and Burundi all have tributaries, which flow into the Nile or into Lake Victoria.

Cities: The major cities that are located on the edge of the Nile and White Nile are: Cairo, Gondokoro, Khartoum, Aswan, Thebes/Luxor, Karnak, and the town of Alexandria lies near the Rozeta branch.

Major Dams: The major dams on the Nile are Roseires Dam, Sennar Dam, Aswan High Dam, and Owen Falls Dam.

Flow Rate: The Nile River’s average discharge is about 300 million cubic metres per day.