Egypt and the Nile Basin Initiative

The Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) is a regional intergovernmental partnership launched in 1999. It has been decided since then to pursue development projects and work out the Nile River Basin Cooperative Framework Agreement (CFA). Today, the NBI has ten member states, with Eritrea participating as an observer.
The CFA was signed by six countries in 2010 and 2011 and ratified by three in 2013 and 2015, but Egypt and Sudan have opposed signing the CFA. The Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan have not signed and Eritrea is not a NBI member state.
Egypt and Sudan took part in launching the NBI and the CFA negotiations. Both countries suspended their NBI memberships after the CFA was opened for signature in 2010. Sudan reactivated its membership in 2013. Egypt has never boycotted the Nile Council of Ministers (Nile-COM), comprised of ministers in charge of water affairs in each of the NBI member states and the highest decision and policy-making organ of the NBI, but it is boycotting the technical level meetings.
In order more fully to understand the present situation, Al-Ahram Weekly spoke exclusively to the Executive Director of the Nile Basin Initiative John Rao Nyaoro, in Entebbe, Uganda.
I visited the Nile Basin Initiative in Entebbe in August 2014. The first thing that struck me on entering the NBI building was the missing photograph of the president of Egypt, which was not hanging among the other photographs of the presidents of NBI member states. I was told that the NBI had not received the official photograph, which is still not hanging on the wall. Does this have anything to do with Egypt's suspension of its NBI membership in 2010?
I do not think it has anything to do with Egypt suspending its NBI membership. We must agree to look at the scenarios and events in Egypt. By the time the NBI was asking for an official photograph, Egypt had just had its presidential elections in May 2014. But there was still some conflict. So I think it was also not proper to force Egypt to give us the picture of its new head of state while the country was still in turmoil.
So we left things to settle, and we have now written to Egypt asking for the official photograph of President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi. We believe that very soon we are going to get a very beautiful photograph of the Egyptian president, and so we have kept the slot on the wall open.
Egypt and Sudan took part in launching the NBI in 1999. But both countries froze their NBI memberships in protest over the signing of the Nile River Basin Cooperative Framework Agreement (CFA) in 2010 and pending the finding of a solution to unresolved points of dispute. Sudan reactivated its membership in 2013, but Egypt's membership is still frozen. Egypt has not boycotted the Nile Council of Ministers (Nile-COM), but it is still boycotting technical level meetings. What kind of freeze is this?
It is not a total freeze. I think Egypt just wanted to express its displeasure in that it was not fully convinced that the CFA had been fully negotiated and a conclusion had been reached. Egypt was just expressing its displeasure to other states, but we still have time to look into this again and resolve the issue and then Egypt will be able to be on board.
Egypt also sent its ambassador to give a speech at the Nile Basin Development Forum in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2014. The Egyptian minister of water resources and irrigation, Hossam Moghazy, attended the Nile Day celebrations in Khartoum, Sudan, in February 2015.
How do you see the participation of the Egyptian minister in the 2015 Nile Day celebrations, despite Egypt's frozen membership of the NBI?
Moghazy's statement was very simple and clear. The message was that Egypt was still at the centre of Nile Basin cooperation and wanted to be a party to it. This also means that Egypt is seeing that the other countries are softening up and is also softening up itself so that it can come to find a solution to these problems.
The minister said Egypt was at the centre of Nile Basin cooperation. That alone says a lot. If you are at the centre of cooperation, you are part and parcel of the organisation, in this case the NBI.
For me, Egypt has come back. The minister did not say that Egypt was at the periphery, but at the centre. So for me, Egypt has come back, and I was the first person to congratulate Egypt and welcome the country back.
All my correspondence today is copied to the minister, and he was the first to confirm his attendance at the 23rd Annual Nile Council of Ministers Meeting in Dodoma, Tanzania, on June 4, 2015.
I congratulated him on this and circulated his decision to all the other ministers. I said, “Look, Egypt is the first to confirm its participation.” So what doubts can I still have? Egypt is back.
But this is just your own personal interpretation, or maybe wishful thinking that does not change the facts on the ground. Anyway, Moghazy did not attend the Dodoma meeting, though there was an Egyptian delegation taking part. When Egypt reactivates its NBI membership, doesn't it have to write to the NBI about this or announce it in one way or another?
Egypt did not write saying it was withdrawing. It just said in a meeting that it was not going to participate fully because it did not agree with the trend the CFA had taken. Nobody chased the country away, it did not resign, and Egypt is still an NBI member state.
It is welcome and free to come back when it feels it will be able to participate. That is why when we have a meeting we send Egypt an invitation, together with the agenda of what is going to be discussed, as the NBI still knows that Egypt is a member.
Egypt depends totally on the Nile River for its existence and survival. This is unlike the other Nile riparian countries, which have other freshwater resources. As NBI executive director, how do you see Egypt's water security concerns and its efforts to protect its right to exist?
We all know and understand Egypt's position as an arid country with little rainfall and total reliance on the Nile River. We also understand the role that should be played by Egypt and all the other Nile Basin states. I want to stress that the water security of the Nile Basin states can only be achieved when all agree to cooperate in the management, protection and conservation of the Nile water resources to ensure that they remain available.
They must all agree to cooperate on how to access that water for use and development. They must all agree to cooperate in managing any conflicts that might arise. This is the key to the challenges facing the Nile Basin states, including Egypt, in ensuring water security.
If we cooperate and look for efficient uses and management of water resources, we can even increase the water of the Nile Basin states, including the water going downstream. So, I still believe that through cooperation we can have even more access to water without causing any harm to Egypt or other countries.
How successful has the NBI been in terms of resolving water conflicts and overcoming the challenges facing the Nile riparian states?
I think the Nile Basin states did wisely in establishing the Nile Basin Initiative with a two-track agenda and key objectives. One track has been to help the Nile Basin states cooperate, manage the water resources of the Nile River, and achieve sustainable development without causing harm to any of the other states. The other track has been to come up with the Cooperative Framework Agreement (CFA).
The NBI has been very successful in bringing the states together and informing them about the challenges of conserving and preserving Nile water resources so that the River can continue flowing. Our role as the NBI is to create a forum where all these challenges can be discussed, and once you have such a forum you can reach solutions rather than listen to media outlets in various countries talking about the challenges without a forum that actually brings them together. If they sit together, and if there is a challenge, solutions will be found.
The NBI has been building the capacity of the Nile Basin states on how they can cooperate and negotiate with each other. The Nile Basin Decision Support System (NB-DSS) has been developed and can be used to plan scenarios. Let us say one country wants to develop the resources of the Nile Basin and another worries that this could incur harm, or does not see how the new project will co-exist with already existing development, for example. We can use the NB-DSS to analyse both the existing and the newly proposed projects and give advice on how best they can co-exist.
A good example is the Rusumo Falls located on the Kagera River on the border of Rwanda and Tanzania. These have been there for the past 30 years but could not be developed because of a perception that interference would cause harm to other downstream states. When we came up with the NB-DSS, we helped find solutions, and nobody then objected to the development of the Rusumo Falls.
What makes the NBI different from previous initiatives like the 1967 Hydromet Project, the 1983 UNDUGU and the 1993 Technical Cooperation Committee for the Promotion of the Development and Environmental Protection of the Nile Basin (TECCONILE)?
The early arrangements were focused on gathering hydrological information on the River Nile and on water quality. If you look at TECCONILE, it was focused on cooperation on gathering information. Even the UNDUGU was just a friendly atmosphere, since in Swahili, the word undugu means “brother”. It did not have anything tangible to bring the states together. It wanted to keep the momentum of us being together, but it had nothing to offer. It is only the NBI that has set a very clear agenda.
In any association where you have three or four people together, there must be rules of the game, i.e., how they are going to co-exist, behave and decide on what they want to do together. Now, the rules of the game can only be provided in the form of an agreement that has been freely negotiated by all the Nile Basin states. That was missing in the previous arrangements.
It has only been the NBI, launched on 22 February 1999, that has set the agenda for them to have a Cooperative Framework Agreement that provides rights and duties for all the Nile Basin states. In cases of supporting the development of water resources, the NBI has a duty of ensuring that the principle of not causing significant harm to other Nile Basin states is kept to.
That is why in my understanding the NBI will be there to stay and will be able to offer solutions to the Nile Basin states that want to see the benefits of being NBI members. Nobody would want to become a party or a member of any association or arrangement if it was not of benefit to it to do so.
To what extent are budgeting issues impeding the continuity of the Nile Basin Initiative?
There is a potential for projects to be implemented worth $6 million. These funds are not available, however, and the NBI is looking for resources. If you look at the NBI member states, six of them are among the poorest states in the world, which means that for them resources are not available. So, we are cooperating with development partners to get additional resources.
However, since 2012 the Nile Basin states have agreed to start giving their contributions to provide some minimal functionality to the NBI. They have increased their contributions from $35,000 per year to $50,000 and $135,000. By 2017, the contributions are expected to go up to $314,000 per year. This means that the Nile Basin states themselves have seen the benefits they are getting from the NBI and they want to support it.
What are the other challenges? How did the decision by Egypt and Sudan to freeze their NBI memberships affect the budget and work programmes of the Initiative?
One NBI objective is to nurture cooperation in order to ensure that the Nile Basin states stay together. But since 2010 two NBI member states, i.e., Egypt and Sudan, have said that they are not going to engage in active cooperation. So that is a big challenge for the NBI.
Neither country has signed the CFA, though Sudan has reactivated its NBI membership. We have tried our level best and informed them that there is a need for all the Nile Basin states to cooperate. Even under international customary law pertaining to shared water resources by two or more states, they must cooperate in the management and preservation of shared resources. They must also cooperate to resolve any conflicts that arise, and speedily.
When Egypt and Sudan temporarily suspended their engagement, they also suspended their annual contributions, though Sudan then came back and continued to give its annual contribution. I have already informed Egypt, an NBI member state, of its arrears. I would be very grateful if Egypt paid. I have informed Egypt that it has not paid from 2012 to the present day.
The annual increment has been increasing, and it owes us for these years. For the NBI to continue carrying out its functions, we request that Egypt fully participate in the NBI, of which it is a member state. Please, Egypt, pay your dues. I know Egypt will respond.
Secondly, our development partners, from which the NBI gets its funding, want us to be together. They say, first of all build your capacity, enhance your cooperation, and come together and continue the same journey. I think this is good, because they are reminding us that we cannot just claim to be comfortable while one member is not fully participating.
We have been using each and every penny they have given us to that effect, i.e., to try to nurture cooperation, inform all the Nile Basin states, and bring them together. That is why we have seized every opportunity to invite them and prepare for them to attend any function or event that the NBI holds.
Even if they have been attending only partially, we still have that kind of arrangement. We believe that with the unfolding scenarios, the donors will see that we have played our role and they will continue to give us money.
Egypt and Sudan are presently cooperating to resolve conflicts peacefully and to reach a win-win situation. In fact, the NBI congratulated Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan, three NBI member states, on signing the Declaration of Principles concerning the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) in March 2015 and offered its assistance. We did not hear about any attempts by the NBI to resolve this conflict in the past. How can the NBI help at present?
The NBI was there, but it was not visible and was not at the forefront. It offered its assistance by making the states aware of best practices today and what was expected of them, but we were not in the forefront negotiating for them because our mandate does not provide for that.
The NBI was behind the capacity building of the Nile Basin states, looking at the best practices and prevailing international law pertaining to the utilisation of shared water resources, like in the case of the GERD that is now being built.
In doing so, the leading principles of the NBI are: equitable and reasonable utilisation of resources, the first principle prevailing under the international water law today; the prevention of harm, or the causing of no significant harm, to any of the Nile Basin states; and cooperation as a balance between the two previous principles that can only be achieved when the states agree to cooperate.
These three principles can bring the states together to consult freely and reach solutions. So the NBI did play that role in the past. These are the principles on which Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia agreed for the operation of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. But there are a lot of other activities and water resources that the three countries still need the Blue Nile for.
There are a lot of irrigation facilities that still need to be built and a lot of water for domestic and other uses that they still need. So the agreement was just the principal agreement on how to operate.
You must also be able to understand how the dam is going to be filled. Is it going to affect already existing uses during the filling? You need to come up with what international law calls joint monitoring of how you are going to be able to fill the dam while not affecting any of the downstream users according to the principle of causing no significant harm which they have agreed to.
Let's say a breakdown occurred and Ethiopia was not generating electricity. Would Ethiopia still hold onto the water when it knows that that same water is needed by people downstream?
As it stands today, the NBI is a transitional institution. It does not have a permanent mandate to force a member state to commit itself to these principles. We are waiting for the CFA to be ratified by six countries, and a permanent institution, the Nile River Basin Commission (NRBC), will then be established.
The commission will be able to develop rules for all the Nile Basin states. If a Nile riparian state wanted to develop a project similar to the GERD, for instance, that state would have to abide by the principles, rules and procedures of the Commission. The NBI is still lacking teeth, but it will have them soon.
There is a perception in Egypt that the Declaration of Principles will replace the Cooperative Framework Agreement. How would you respond to this?
It cannot replace the CFA, which is for the entire Nile Basin and all ten NBI member states. The Declaration of Principles is only for three NBI member states — Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan. The CFA allows for subsidiary kinds of arrangement, however.
Maybe on the Blue Nile the three countries can agree on a particular kind of arrangement. But that does not bind the other Nile Basin states on the White Nile.
Under the East African Community (EAC) arrangements, the White Nile is also governed by the Lake Victoria Protocol that does not bind Egypt. As a result, the CFA will be the constitution of the Nile River Basin, while the Declaration of Principles will be subsidiary to it and feed into the constitution, which is the CFA.
The Declaration cannot replace the CFA. A son cannot replace his father and his mother when he is still depending on them. He can only come in when his father and mother are dead to inherit their property.
The CFA will thrive when it is ratified by six countries and can therefore be enforced. In law, if the CFA collapses then even the subsidiary agreements cannot stand because these subsidiary agreements, including the Declaration of Principles, are based on the CFA.
It is no secret that the media can escalate conflict. When I interviewed the speaker of the House of People's Representatives of Ethiopia, Aba-dula Gemeda, in December 2014, he blamed the media for propagating the misperception that Egypt opposes the development of the Ethiopian people. He also blamed the media for misleading the Egyptian people into thinking that Ethiopia intends to cut or reduce Egypt's current share of the Nile's water. He said that Egyptian and Ethiopian politicians knew that these are just misperceptions, however. Do you think there is a need for better performance from the media in the Nile Basin countries?
The NBI has taken a step forward with regard to the media. Any national engagements we are taking today must involve the media. The NBI is trying as much as possible to put facts on its website that can be accessed by the media — not perceptions, not what people think, but actual facts.
We try to help journalists to be factual and at the same time we give them opportunities to understand the Nile Basin even by sponsoring them for training and by organising media competitions.
However, the NBI does not have a mandate to monitor the performance of the media. We do not monitor, but we do review, what the media writes about the NBI and the Nile Basin Initiative. The best we can do when a journalist gives non-factual information is to correct it and give information on the facts so people can read the facts rather than what is false.
The NBI was conceived as a transitional institution until the CFA enters into force and a permanent institution, the Nile River Basin Commission, is created. The commission will be established after six countries ratify the CFA. So far, three countries have ratified it. Do you expect the commission to be established anytime soon, and what are you hoping to achieve as NBI executive director?
The Nile Basin states negotiated a document, the CFA, that has reached the point of signing and ratification. I believe that the objective which made them establish the NBI and work out the CFA is still there. What needs to be done is to resolve any issue that is still not fully accepted in the CFA for all the Nile Basin states to become party to it.
The ratification is going on, and very soon the six countries will ratify the CFA. But as NBI executive director, this is not the only thing I want to see. I want to see all the Nile Basin states party to the agreement.
Some of them, such as Egypt and Sudan, have stated very clearly that it will be difficult for them to be a party if Article 14(b) of the signed CFA remains unresolved. So the NBI is doing research on how best to resolve Article 14(b), which is already included as an annex in the signed CFA. The signed agreement states that Article 14(b) shall be resolved within six months of establishing the commission that will be established after six countries ratify the CFA.
The plan is to prepare a solution that will be presented to the commission immediately after its establishment. This is the line the NBI should be able to pursue, involving the Nile Basin states to reach a solution so that all of them can come on board.
The Nile River Basin is a shared resource and is key to all the Nile Basin states, especially those that have not signed the CFA. This is about their livelihoods. I know they will come on board once a solution to Article 14(b) is found.
Egypt has been trying to cooperate to resolve problems peacefully and without delay and to reach a win-win situation. It asked for an extraordinary meeting to be held to discuss the legal and institutional consequences of signing the CFA in 2010. Egypt asked for this immediately after the signing in 2010, and it has been repeating its call. Have there been any developments?
It is true that Egypt has been asking for the meeting, and actually what was initially proposed was a heads of state meeting to have the Nile Council of Ministers (Nile-COM) reach a solution. However, that could not take place. It was not feasible because most of the heads of state did not have time to meet together.
But in spite of this, the Council of Ministers still went ahead and has been continuing its meetings. When it has a meeting, it invites Egypt to come. Egypt has been attending most of these meetings, but it was only this year that the minister attended the Nile Day meeting.
So I still believe that despite the failure of the heads of state to meet, the kind of unfolding of events that we are seeing, with Egypt with its current minister willing to open up and talk and negotiate with fellow ministers, will lead to finding a solution.
As NBI executive director, I cannot decide the agenda of the Nile-COM as every member is asked to propose the agenda. If the Egyptian minister is willing to propose the agenda, he is free to do so, and the Council of Ministers is free to discuss any agenda that it agrees can be put on board.
The agenda is not the responsibility of the executive director. It is a matter for the Nile-COM. It is they who decide on the agenda. Egypt is a member of the Nile-COM, and it attends meetings and is able to propose the agenda and convince its colleagues to discuss it.
So no meeting has been held so far on the legal and institutional consequences of the signed CFA and after five years of Egypt repeating its call?
Since the opening of the CFA for signature in 2010, no meeting has been held to discuss this issue.
Do you think that Egypt's call for a meeting on the legal and institutional consequences of the signed CFA will ever take place?
Why not? The Nile Basin states want to resolve the outstanding issues. If they agree that it is part of the agenda, or if they give directions before discussions start, we as the secretariat will implement it. We are waiting for directions to be given by the Council of Ministers, and we are ready to implement their decisions.
The interviewer is a senior news anchor and correspondent for Nile TV International and a member of Transcend International, founded by Norwegian professor Johan Galtung in 1993 to promote peace throughout the world.