The Nile crisis comes to the boil

Abstract

A crisis is emerging in the Nile Basin, where some 300 million people in Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania and Burundi rely on the Nile directly or indirectly. Egypt and Sudan wish to preserve a regime based on treaties drawn up during the colonial era that allocated the vast majority of the Nile's water to them. Countries upstream are determined to challenge this. In 1999 the countries using the river formed the Nile Basin Initiative to try to resolve these differences. More than a decade of negotiations failed to break the impasse. In May Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda decided to wait no longer and signed a new treaty, without the consent of Egypt and Sudan. The signatories have given the other Nile Basin countries one year to join the pact. For Egypt, which relies on the Nile for 95 per cent of its water, this is a question of life or death. Egypt has, in the past, indicated it will go to war if its share of the Nile is reduced. Talks continue, but the impasse is driving the region towards a crisis to which there is no easy resolution.