The Nile, for so long the lifeblood of many African civilizations along its banks, is now the scene of acrimonious debate and potential conflict among the nations that contribute to or depend on its precious waters. Nine Nile Basin countries are pitted against each other; on the one hand is Egypt and Sudan and on the other Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, and Ethiopia. The battle for control of the Nile is fueled by a combustible mix of colonial history, postcolonial politics, environmental threats, and developmental ambitions.
For the past decade, the nine countries have been engaged in contentious negotiations for a new treaty on how to share and protect the mighty river at a time when they are faced with severe environmental, demographic, and development pressures. The talks were aimed at replacing a 1959 accord between Egypt and Sudan, "itself a revised version of the anachronistic colonial treaty between Egypt and its British imperial taskmaster, ostensibly on behalf of its upstream African colonies, signed in 1929," notes Gamal Nkrumah, the Ghanaian-Egyptian columnist. Even prior to the 1929 treaty, there were other inequitable treaties that sought to limit the use of Nile waters by the upstream Nile Basin countries especially Ethiopia. These include the treaties between Italy and Britain in 1891 and between Britain and Ethiopia in 1902. The legality of these treaties in the post-independence era has been hotly debated (see for example the essays by Okidi, Mekonnen, Aberra, Dellapenna, Jacobs, Swain, Carroll, Wiebe, and Kagwanja).
The 1929 treaty between the British imperial and semi-autonomous Egyptian governments gave Egypt exclusive rights to the Nile waters. It stipulated, "No irrigation or power works or measures are to be constructed or taken on the River Nile and its tributaries. The agreement also forbids countries from using waters of Lake Victoria that is the source of White Nile and that has affected Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania." In the 1959 treaty Egypt and newly independent Sudan gave themselves "full utilization of the Nile waters" by allocating themselves, respectively, 55.5bn cubic meters and 18.5bn cubic meters of the river's estimated annual average flow of 84bn cubic meters of water; the remaining 10bn cubic meters "was reserved for seepage losses and evaporation in Lake Nasser, behind the Aswan dam. Upstream countries were not allocated a share."
Using these outdated and indisputably inequitable treaties drawn up during colonial rule when none of the upstream countries except Ethiopia (which was never colonized and vehemently objected to the 1959 treaty but was ignored) were independent, and are no longer worth the paper they were written on, Egypt claims international law on its side. For the upstream Nile basin countries not only does Egypt's invocation of colonial treaties to which they were not party to is anachronistic and unacceptable. After independence, they increasingly came to regard the 1959 treaty as illegal and more recently began to ignore it by launching irrigation and hydroelectric projects using water from Nile River and its basins as evident lately in Tanzania. The antagonism to these treaties in Eastern Africa is best captured in an article last month in the Daily Nation entitled, "Nile treaties are malicious and must be renegotiated."
While Egypt and Sudan rest their case on history and dubious international law, the seven upstream countries base their claims to a greater share of the waters of the Nile on geography and growing needs. The Nile may have been known as the gift of Egypt, in reality it has always been a gift to Egypt, which ought to be shared as equitably as possible, for this great river, the world's longest, starts its celebrated journey deep in the heart of Africa, one branch, the White Nile from the basins of the Great Lakes of East Africa meandering northwards where it meets the other branch, the Blue Nile, which surges from Lake Tana in Ethiopia, near Khartoum for the rest of its epic voyage north into the desiccated lands of Egypt before discharging what remains into the Mediterranean Sea.
The Blue Nile apparently contributes 86% of the Nile waters that flows into Aswan Dam in Egypt. Surely, Ethiopia, one of Africa's and the world's poorest countries has rightful claims to the Nile for its own development, for agriculture and hydroelectric power, to feed and sustain its 83 million people, the continent's second largest population after Nigeria, which is higher than Egypt's 79 million, the continent's third highest. It is estimated that by 2050, Ethiopia will have 150 million people, and Egypt 122 million. Surely, the Ethiopians, at the very least, need the Nile as much as the Egyptians do, not to mention the rapidly growing populations of the other Nile Basin countries.
Egypt's dependency on the Nile is well known and is not seriously questioned by the other countries. What they question is Egypt's exclusive claims to the waters of the Nile, to which the Egyptian landscape hardly contributes anything. The Nile has been central to Egypt since time immemorial. In ancient times, it gave birth to Pharaonic civilization and today Egypt relies on it for 90 percent of its water supplies. It is clear, therefore, why successive Egyptian governments have regarded the Nile as key to its national survival and security. Indeed, at one time President Anwar Sadat "famously declared himself ready to go to war against any attempt to limit Egypt's dominance of the river; recently, Egyptian columnists have characterized the actions of upstream states as a ‘genocidal war' against Egyptians."
Such overheated rhetoric has tended to be more inflammatory than persuasive in the other countries that make up the Nile Basin. Indeed misguided obduracy on the part of Egypt and to a smaller extent Sudan led to the collapse of the negotiations for a new and comprehensive treaty recognizing the legitimate needs of all the Nile Basin countries. The talks fell apart when the upstream countries insisted on their right to undertake construction projects on the Nile without obtaining the approval of downstream states. On May 14, 2010, five upstream countries-Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Rwanda-signed a new agreement, the Nile Cooperative Framework Agreement. "We couldn't wait any longer, since we have been negotiating for over ten years," Rwandan environment minister Stanislas Kamanzi told the BBC shortly afterward.
This sent a wave of alarm across Egypt, to quote from an article in The East African Standard. Following the signing of the treaty, Uganda announced its intention to "go ahead to use the River Nile Basin waters for massive development projects, regardless of whether Egypt and Sudan sign the Nile River Basin Cooperative Framework or not." Egypt and Sudan were given a year to make up their minds and sign the new treaty. This weekend (June 26-27) ministers in charge of water in the Nile Basin states are scheduled to meet in Addis Ababa to discuss fast-tracking projects and programs already in the pipeline and "look into aspects accruing from the signing of the CFA."
Clearly shocked by these developments, Egypt veers from making threats and trying to pursue a diplomatic charm offensive. Its arsenal of intimidation includes threatening legal and other actions such as mobilizing the donor countries against funding projects in the upstream Nile Basin. It is reported some "key donors have broken their long silence and are putting pressure on the Nile Basin states to engage in more constructive dialogue to solve the impasse over the new treaty. There are pundits and politicians in Egypt whispering darkly that the action of the upstream countries is part of "an American-Zionist plan which aims at dismantling Egypt." Threats are not likely to go far and war is hardly an option. As Uganda's Minister for regional affairs, Isaac Musumba asks, "What it is Egypt going to do - bomb us all?" Instead, he believes, "Diplomacy will help us navigate this issue"
Egypt's diplomatic offensive since the signing of the new agreement, which it regards as illegal, has consisted largely of aid promises "to spend big on the Nile Basin countries. Many see this as a move to bribe the countries out of the agreement. For instance, Egypt offered to fund a range of projects in Kenya." For a country with huge developmental challenges of its own, and one that is itself quite dependent on foreign aid and remittances, Egypt does not have the economic muscle to suborn these countries out of their rights to the Nile. Neither does it have the political credibility to do so ever since it abandoned its Pan-African and Third World radicalism to become a pliant neo-colony under President Mubarak's torpid octogenarian dictatorship.
As one commentator puts it, Egypt's Nile predicament "reveals a long-term political malaise, which has seen the country's status as the pre-eminent regional power slowly drain away. ‘President Nasser cultivated a sense of post-colonial solidarity with upstream states based around the non-aligned movement, yet under the regimes of his successors Africa has been neglected,' said Nabil Abdel Fattah, a research director at the Al-Ahram Centre. We have seen a marginalization of the African affairs institutes at universities, a marginalization of African news on our TV screens. The problem here is ... the perception we have of Egyptian identity. Our politicians see Africa as a backwater, its countries as underdeveloped.'"
During the failed negotiations before the upstream states signed their new agreement, Egypt shifted from self-referential and self-serving historic to legalistic to economic arguments. Comments a thoughtful Egyptian observer in a recent special issue on the subject in Al-Ahram Weekly:
Historic rights, and the legalistic, economic and foreign strings arguments, have one element in common -- the complete absence of the other side. They do not allow for the possibility that the countries on the other side might have a history or legal arguments of their own, a view on mutual economic interests, or even a word to say on how closely they are connected to world powers to the West or East. There is no evidence, whatsoever, of any awareness that these countries have developed politically, economically and demographically or an acknowledgement of the fact that they may have economic initiatives worthy of noting and that they have their own assessments of regional and international affairs which shape their regional and international alliances.
He urges his compatriots and Egyptian policy makers to develop
a new Egyptian vision for the Nile. It should seek to establish new foundations for relations between the lower riparian nations -- Egypt and Sudan -- and upper riparian nations, based not only on the division of Nile waters but also on joint development projects, increased trade and higher investment levels. Such a vision would work towards the depoliticization of water by not reducing relations between the Nile Basin countries to the level of water quotas. It would further promote the notion of partnership in our interaction with these nations, thereby ensuring that these relations enjoy their appropriate level of importance and attention within the greater scheme of Egypt's foreign relations. I have no doubt Egyptian arguments will be more persuasive in this context than if they are formulated within a framework of political, legal or carrot-and- stick confrontations.
The conflict over the control, management, and distribution of the waters of the Nile between the upstream and downstream countries raises serious questions about water resources and international security. Some believe conflicts over water, not oil or land, will foment the wars of the 21st century. Others dismiss the ‘looming water wars' thesis on the grounds that historically there have been few such conflicts. To quote one author, "according to the UN, there are more than 250 internationally shared rivers covering nearly half the total land surface of the earth, as well as innumerable shared aquifers. Around 300 potential conflicts around the world have been identified but history suggests very few if any are expected to develop into armed conflict. In the last century, only seven minor skirmishes over water were documented."
The past doe not of course always accurately predict the future. More generally, it is worth pointing out that it is not the abundance or scarcity of resources in itself that causes war and conflict, but how they are controlled, managed, and distributed. If the hydro-politics of the Nile continue to be badly managed, principally by Egypt and Sudan clinging to archaic historical and legal claims and fatuous sense of superiority, the danger of destructive conflict can indeed not be ruled out. To avoid such an eventuality, all parties must engage in serious diplomacy without preconditions rooted in discredited colonial histories
The dispute over the Nile is a reminder to all those, including many in Egypt itself and Euroamerica, who occasionally forget that Egypt is in Africa, and strap it to other historical geographies that without the Nile there would be no Egypt, and without the lakes and rivers and watersheds stretching for more than 6,500 kilometers, all the way to the Great Lakes of East Africa, there would be no Nile. The Nile is the giant umbilical cord that connects the eastern and northeastern landmasses and peoples of our vast continent. Its gifts ought to be equitably shared for the good of all those who live in its expansive bosom.
First Written, June 26, 2010
