Beginning***Africa

Uganda (1) -- Analyses -- 2010

More about the 0pposition by the upstream states

25.06.2010

Opposition by the upstream states to the colonial treaties is not new. Ethiopia was never colonised, and rejected the 1959 bilateral agreement that gave Egypt three-quarters of the Nile's annual flow (55.5bn cubic metres) and Sudan a quarter, even before it was signed. Most of the east African states also refused to recognise it, and earlier Nile treaties agreed by Britain on their behalf, when they became independent in the 1960s.
A combination of factors, including instability, poor governance, financial constraints and the availability of other water sources, meant the matter remained dormant. It was in the 1990s that various governments seriously started to consider using their Nile Basin waters to generate energy and irrigate crops. But when funding applications were made to the World Bank and others, problems arose. "Our development partners would always ask what other countries on the Nile were saying," said John Rao Nyaoro, Kenya's director of water resources. "We needed a clearing house for these projects," which will be a function of the Nile commission.
Officials in Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia, which all have significant, if increasingly unreliable, rainfall, do acknowledge Egypt's huge dependence on the Nile and its right to a large part of its flow. But they say it is unreasonable to ask them to leave a valuable resource untouched, as the demand increases due to the changing climate and, especially, population growth.
Egypt's population of 79 million is expected to reach 122 million by 2050, according to the Population Reference Bureau . But in the upstream states the growth is even faster. There are 83 million Ethiopians today, but in 40 years there will be 150 million. In Uganda, where the average number of children per woman is 6.7, one of the highest in the world, the population is due to more than triple over the same period to 97 million. For Uganda, the priority for now is electricity, and it wants to build more dams.
Ethiopia has begun a hydropower development, opening a dam at Lake Tana, the Blue Nile's source, and is in talks with Egypt and Sudan to build several more dams on the river. The electricity will be shared among the states – the mutual benefit envisaged when the Nile Basin Initiative was established. But Ethiopia also plans large irrigation schemes, which it says are essential for food. Tanzania has also talked of tapping Lake Victoria to supply dry villages in its north-west.
Under the agreement signed by five countries, each state's share of the Nile Basin water will depend on variables such as population, contribution to the river's flow, climate, social and economic needs, and, crucially, current and potential uses of the water – a factor which will heavily favour Egypt and Sudan.