East Africa challenges Egyptian control of Nile
By William Maclean
NAIROBI, March 17 (Reuters) – Egypt, countering a challenge from sub-Saharan Africa to its control of Nile waters, is urging thirsty upstream nations to do a better job of conserving and distributing their own abundant rains.
“We are not the bad guys. Egypt is the good guy – as are all the Nile Basin countries, and we can all win,” Abdel-Fattah Metawie, head of the Nile Water Sector at Egypt’s Water Resources and Irrigation Ministry, told Reuters.
“The Nile Basin has the potential to satisfy not only today’s demand for water but also future demand. It is a matter of management of the resources that we have.”
Impoverished sub-Saharan African countries are pushing for a fairer share of the river among the 10 countries of the so-called Nile Basin of Kenya, Tanzania, Egypt, Uganda, Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda, Congo, Ethiopia and Eritrea.
The rapidly growing nations are angered by a colonial-era pact giving effective control of the 6,741 km (4,189 mile)-long Nile and its African origins to Egyptian users far downstream.
Under the 1929 accord between Egypt and Britain, acting on behalf of its then east African colonies, Egypt can veto any use of Lake Victoria water it feels threatens levels in the Nile.
But Metawie argues that sub-Saharan Africa, with the lion’s share of rainfall among Nile Basin nations, will not solve the problem by simply diverting more Nile water for its own use.
Instead what it badly needs is the investment and expertise to install more watershed management, irrigation and water storage systems to maximise its precious rainwater, he says.
1929 TREATY
Kenya, which like Tanzania suffers recurrent droughts due to deforestation, soil erosion and erratic rainfall, says the 1929 treaty should be replaced by alternative arrangements that will allow it to expand irrigation and develop hydroelectric plants.
Such sentiments, widespread among other sub-Saharan countries, are likely to be heard on the sidelines of a meeting of Nile Basin water ministers in Kenya on Thursday and Friday.
The ministers will not try to thrash out a new framework for cooperation – that is a job for a committee of expert negotiators that began separate talks in December.
But they will review irrigation, power and drainage projects and seek consensus on crucial statistics about rainfall and river volumes used by the expert negotiating committee.
“The basis that we are working on now in the new agreement, is that each country on the river should get equitable use, Egyptian Water Minister Mahmoud Abu Zaid told Reuters in Cairo.
“We should not create projects that will harm others and we should satisfy all the demands of the countries from new projects which can meet such needs,” he said. Abu Zaid agrees on the need for a new pact but insists Egypt will not accept a smaller portion than it is allotted by the 1929 treaty.
Egypt would need even more Nile water after 2017 because of population growth, he said. But if the Nile waters were better preserved it could meet the needs of all along its banks.
To date such arguments have cut little ice with public opinion in East Africa. Ugandan legislators have already suggested that Egypt be billed for its use of Nile water.
“How can you tell people living by Lake Victoria who have nothing they cannot use the water?” Tanzania’s water minister Edward Lowasa said recently. (Additional reporting by Tom Perry in Cairo)