River Nile Treaty
A while back I wrote an article wondering why there was no Ugandan-Egyptian Cooperation concerning the River Nile and how water from it is used. Turns out that there is something going on and in the New Vision Newspaper today I saw an article concerning a treaty between Nile Basin countries concerning the River Nile.
Apparently there is a dead lock at the moment in agreements. Previous treaties were established in 1929 and 1954 by the British. The 1929 treaty effectively banned other countries from using the Nile waters for irrigation and power generation. This was signed between the British and Egyptian governments. To hell with the rest of the countries where the Nile just happens to originate from. The deadlock at the moment comes probably because there is a desire by Egypt and Sudan to maintain these conditions. One of the newspaper articles mentioned that Ugandan officials were supplying water usage data to the Egyptian government but were denied the usage data of the Egyptians.
While it is understandable that the water is very much needed by the Egyptian and Sudanese governments, what does not make sense it that Uganda, where the water originates, is not able to directly benefit from it! And again in this day and age it really should not be the case that Egypt can dictate the usage of the water but rather setup a real cooperation where both countries benefit from each other. Such a resource cannot be seen as belonging to only one party!
November 22nd, 2008 at 7:23 am
Surely it should be Egypt and Sudan pleading with Uganda to sign agreements with them. The Nile flows from Uganda (and Ethiopia), it’s Uganda’s (and Ethiopia’s) property until it crosses the border, Uganda (and Ethiopia) should be able to do whatever it wishes with the Nile waters.
December 16th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Probably Uganda & Ethiopia are not taken into account because between the concerned countries Egypt & Sudan are the more influential (read money talks…)