Egypt’s El-Sisi, Ethiopian premier confirm attendance of Nile summit

Ethiopian prime minister Hailemariam Desalegne (L) and Egyptian president Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi

What you need to know:

  • The CFA however allows the upstream countries to undertake activities as long as they consult widely with and notify other members especially those that significantly depend on the river.
  • Sudan made U-turn and requested for admission into the CFA leaving Egypt outside alone.
  • Politics aside, the stakes over the river are rising every day, especially in light of changing socio-economic dynamics in the Nile basin among others high population growth, climate change, infrastructure development, and environmental degradation.

Kampala. Egyptian president Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi and Ethiopian premier Hailemariam Desalegne, have both confirmed attendance of the make or break Nile Basin States Summit in Kampala tomorrow. The conference is expected to bring to an end the contention over a new framework for sharing and use of the waters of River Nile.
Diplomatic sources familiar with the matter told Daily Monitor that the summit, that was initially slated for today, was moved to tomorrow at the request of Ethiopia for yet unknown reasons. This is the third time the meeting has been rescheduled.
Egypt and Ethiopia have long-standing disputes over the sharing of the Nile waters, a matter that has sucked in other Nile Riparian states of Burundi, Rwanda, DR Congo, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, South Sudan, the Sudan, Egypt, and Eritrea, which all share the river’s catchment area.

About River Nile
Spanning an estimated 4,132 miles long, River Nile is considered the longest river in the world.
Sources privy to the details of the meeting indicated that the Sudan will be represented by Vice President Hassabo Mohammed Abdurrahman, Burundi by second vice president Joseph Butore, South Sudan by vice president James Wani Igga, Rwanda by the minister of minerals and natural resources Vincent Biruta, and Kenya by water minister Eugene Wamalwa.

Tanzania will be represented at the summit by foreign affairs minister Augustine Mahiga, and DR Congo by the minister of environment and sustainable development Ambatore Nyongolo.
President Museveni in March called the summit to arbitrate the matter, maintaining that disagreements that “never come to end are either because of disinformation or misinformation.”
The Riparian States 17 years ago established the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI), an intergovernmental body to iron out differences over sharing of the Nile waters, and in 2010, a new charter known as the Cooperative Framework Agreement (CFA) or the Entebbe Agreement, was adopted to guide a new course of cooperation.

While Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, Tanzania, DR Congo, Ethiopia, and Kenya signed the framework, Egypt and the Sudan declined insisting on the pre-colonial agreements which grants them bigger quotas of the Nile waters but which the former interpret[ed] as granting “monopoly” over the river. Egypt signed an agreement with Britain in 1929, while the Sudan signed a similar pact with Britain in 1959; granting them larger quotas of the river flow.
The Nile’s annual volume of flow was estimated at 85 billion cubic metres at the Aswan High Dam by the colonial agreements, which granted Egypt a 75 per cent share (55.5 billion cubic metres) and 25 per cent (18.5 billion cubic metres) to the Sudan with the assumption that the other countries upstream can get water through other sources, including rain or even fresh water lakes.
Egypt [and the Sudan] declined to sign the CFA specifically over Article 14(b) which requires members “not to significantly affect the water security of any other Nile Basin States.”

What it means
What this means is that upstream countries; Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda and South Sudan cannot undertake any activities, like irrigation or dam construction, which could significantly affect Egypt’s [or Sudan’s] allocated water quotas.
The CFA however allows the upstream countries to undertake activities as long as they consult widely with and notify other members especially those that significantly depend on the river.
Sudan made U-turn and requested for admission into the CFA leaving Egypt outside alone.
Politics aside, the stakes over the river are rising every day, especially in light of changing socio-economic dynamics in the Nile basin among others high population growth, climate change, infrastructure development, and environmental degradation.