Posted on July 2, 2010 by westerhof| Leave a comment
A water crisis is emerging in the Nile Basin where some 300 million people in Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania and Burundi rely on the Nile indirectly and directly along its 6,741-kilometre stretch. In 1999 the countries of the Nile Basin formed the Nile Basin Initiative. Since then there have been a number of disputes between Egypt and Sudan on the one hand and a challenge by the other countries on the validity of the Nile Water Agreement, which they claim is an unjust colonial relic and should not be applicable in a post-independent Africa. Sahel Blog has been following the present dispute which appears to be at a stalemate with Egypt and Sudan refusing to join the others in a water sharing agreement:
'The nations that signed the agreement in May – Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Kenya – will not back down. But they will need help to bring the agreement into being. The five signatories have given the other Nile Basin countries – Egypt, Sudan, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo – one year to join the pact. The new deal would need at least six signatories to come into force. Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have not signed the deal yet and have so far been tight-lipped about whether they plan to or not. Egypt and Sudan are still saying no to the deal: Responding to the [latest] developments, Kamal Ali Mohamed, Sudan's water minister, said his country would now stop co-operating with the NBI because the agreement raised legal issues.'
Source: Sokari Ekine, Pambazuka News, 1 July 2010
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