From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Wed May 12 2010 - 07:28:19 EDT
Nile treaties are malicious and must be renegotiated
By JOHN B. OSORO
Posted Tuesday, May 11 2010 at 18:02
TANZANIA PLANS TO BUILD a 170-kilometre water pipeline from Lake Victoria
to benefit an estimated 4,000 people in its arid northwestern region.
Similarly, Kenyan policymakers often toy with the idea of pumping massive
amounts of water from the lake to supply populations in vast water-deficit
areas.
Similar sentiments regarding the use of the waters are increasingly gaining
currency among upstream countries.
These plans remain just dreams, thanks to an abusive agreement drawn during
the colonial days to dispossess Africans of their Nile heritage.
There is a 1929 agreement between Egypt and Britain granting Cairo the
lion’s share of the Nile water resource. This treaty shamelessly forbids
Ethiopia, which generates over 85 per cent of the total Nile water, from
irrigating farms.
The agreement empowers Egypt to command Ethiopia (a sovereign state) on the
utilisation of the Blue Nile water within its borders.
DESPITE ATTEMPTS BY SEVEN UPSTREAM nations to convince Egypt to renegotiate
this bizarre agreement, Cairo continues to ignore them while barring any
large-scale upstream irrigation or power generation projects on the Nile
Basin.
Instead, Egypt persists on squandering the spoils of the Nile through the
creation of a new town called Nubia from scratch (1987) fed by canals
drawing excessive amounts of water from the river.
Construction of the Tanzanian water pipeline is a way of expressing the
determination of the seven riparian nations — Kenya, Uganda, Eritrea,
Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, and Ethiopia — to counter this historical
injustice.
Faced with an estimated population of over 160 million, which is likely to
double in 25 years, countries on the Nile Basin are under pressure to access
this water.
Unless Egypt co-operates, lack of an agreeable agreement may spark military
action or Northern Sudan and Egypt will eventually contend with any
remaining volume of water after upstream states have extracted enough
quantities to satisfy their water and energy needs.
Threats from the north that their inflated share of the Nile’s water is a
historic right, and that Egypt reserves the right to take whatever action it
deems necessary to safeguard that right, is no longer practical.
Egypt is certainly aware that most riparian nations resent this treaty.
Besides, the collaboration between the World Bank and Egypt to deny upstream
countries the external funding required to construct multipurpose dams on
the Nile has also fanned this resentment.
To put it simply, the World Bank has continuously displayed its reluctance
to provide infrastructure development funds to riparian states, which want
to harness the Nile waters unless Egypt endorses the projects.
Through this, Western donors are playing the enforcers’ role of the 1929 and
1959 Nile Treaties crafted purposely to impoverish the people of the Nile
Basin.
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