The southern reaches of the Nile Basin and much of the Congo Basin have historically been deprived of many of the prodigious material benefits deriving from the intensification of the human exploitation of rivers for the advancement of intensive agriculture. Water was by and large plentiful, there was little seasonality, and humidity levels were high. The Congo Basin, where annual precipitation hovers around 1,500-2,000 mm on average, making it one of the moistest, richest and most intact equatorial jungle regions in the world, is home to one of the world's most diverse ecosystems. Because of this, its inhabitants have had little incentive to engage in irrigated farming. The peoples of the Congo Basin have for millennia survived on non-irrigated subsistence farming, practicing the slash-and-burn method where plots in the forest are cleared and burned, the resulting ashes acting as fertilisers that replenish the generally poor soil, which is deficient in nutrients though not in humus. The climatic conditions and the inhospitable terrain prompted the peoples and isolated communities of this remote area to adopt material cultures most suitable for their environment. The rich ecosystem also subjected the indigenous peoples to the avarice of more technically advanced peoples, who ravaged the sprawling area for timber, ivory, exotic hides and slaves. Slavery and the subjection of the peoples of the Congo Basin to the whims of outsiders' commercial interests engendered a vicious cycle of economic stagnation, depopulation and environmental degradation. In contrast, the lower reaches of the Nile, Egypt and northern Sudan, have since time immemorial experimented with the ever more dynamic engines of relatively inexpensive irrigation techniques, creating the potent impetus to the Nile Valley civilisations in Egypt and Nubia, or northern Sudan. Today, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is the quintessential Congo Basin country. For centuries, the DRC suffered at the hands of unscrupulous slavers. The country, the second largest in Africa after mostly arid Algeria with an area of 2,345,409 square km, constitutes the bulk of the Congo Basin. With more than 75 million people, the DRC is by far the most populous political entity in this particular ecosystem. It is against this backdrop that Egypt is currently exploring ways to bridge the Congo-Nile divide. To achieve water security and reduce the country's reliance on the Blue Nile, originating in the Ethiopian Highlands, Egyptian authorities are carrying out feasibility studies to unlock the economic value of connecting the Congo and Nile Rivers. LINKING THE CONGO AND THE NILE: There are stumbling blocks that could render the linking of the Congo and the Nile uneconomic, however. The geographical divide between the Congo Basin and the Nile Basin is marked by rugged territory, the Ironstone Plateau, demarcating the borders between South Sudan and the DRC. To the east, the plateau separates the Central African Republic from Rwanda, Uganda, and South Sudan; and to the west, the DRC. Burundi is where the Congo-Nile converges. Political impediments could derail the prospective project. Egypt's hydraulic perspective could clash with Congolese interests. Even more pertinent are the politics of Sudan and South Sudan. The Congo-Nile divide runs through where the Congo, Chad and Nile Basins meet, and then it abruptly turns southeast and further south along the border between the DRC, South Sudan, Uganda and Rwanda. The Congo River water that eventually washes into the Atlantic Ocean amounts to 1,000 billion cubic metres annually. Egypt has been eyeing this apparent waste of precious Congolese water resources, while the Congolese have insisted that access to this water will have a price. At the Berlin Conference of 1884-1985, at the height of the so-called “Scramble for Africa,” European colonial powers decided that the Congo-Nile divide was the perfect boundary between British-controlled territories to the east and southeast of the Nile Basin (including contemporary South Sudan and Uganda) and territories controlled by the French and Belgians (the DRC and the Central African Republic) to the west. Today, the key to the diversion of water from the River Congo to the Nile is a 600-km canal that cuts through South Sudan. With this war-torn country in turmoil, and a hostile pro-Muslim Brotherhood government in Khartoum, there could be political problems ahead in exploiting the canal. “The proposal envisages a time span of thirty to forty years to complete the construction of the Congo-Nile project. The cost is exorbitant, as conservative estimates calculate it at some LE3 trillion [$428 billion]. The basic impetus is to be free from the repercussions of Ethiopia's Grand Renaissance Dam. However, the Congo-Nile project is not a viable alternative at present,” Mohamed Nasr Allam, a former minister of irrigation and water resources, told the Weekly. “The altitude differentials present a formidable problem. Geological and geographical difficulties will also undoubtedly hamper the implementation of the proposed Congo-Nile project. “The proposed Congo-Nile project entails the construction of some 25 turbines and pumping stations as well as dams of different sizes and capacities,” Allam noted. Most other Egyptian experts concur. “Linking the White Nile that runs through South Sudan with the Congo River would be a difficult undertaking because the two rivers have different altitude levels,” Gamal Al-Qalyoubi, a professor of petroleum and energy at the American University in Cairo, said. “But water could be diverted by digging a 600-km canal from the White Nile in South Sudan to northern Sudan and then to Lake Nasser,” he added. Some of the challenges of the project include the construction of tunnels through the hard granite rock that covers a gargantuan stretch of territory of some 4,600 km in area. This region, the Mountains of the Moon, forms a natural boundary between the DRC, Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda and is both a dramatic illustration of the geo-strategic advantages of the upstream Nile Basin countries and an impediment to mega-projects such as the Congo-Nile proposals. Large labour crews and a host of foreign experts and engineers will be necessary to bridge the African continent's north-south hydrological fault line. For their part, Congolese authorities are mostly interested in using the river for electricity production, as opposed to irrigation and fresh-water supply. Congo already has an abundance of water resources. “The Congolese authorities are already involved in other projects designed to exploit the waters of the Congo River. They have signed agreements with South Africa and other southern African nations to facilitate hydro-electric projects on the river to supply southern Africa with electricity, for example,” Meghawri Shehata, an academic, told the Weekly. “There is another equally important dimension to the Congo-Nile project. The Congo River has many tributaries, and some, like the Ubangui and Chari Rivers, are de facto international boundaries between the DRC and the Central African Republic. The DRC is not the only Congo Basin nation. There are ten countries within the Congo Basin, and some might object to the proposed Congo-Nile project. There are complex issues of international law at stake as a result,” Shehata said. MEMORIES OF THE JONGLEI CANAL: From Egypt's point of view, the slow-flowing waters of the White Nile in South Sudan could be utilised more effectively. The White Nile there gathers in the swampy wetlands of the Sudd region, where the Nile waters virtually come to a standstill. Indeed, the erstwhile Jonglei Canal project was designed to divert water from the Sudd downstream to Sudan and Egypt, given that much of the White Nile water in the Sudd region is currently lost to evaporation. However, the Jonglei Canal project, conjured up by the Egyptian authorities in 1946, was never completed due to complicated economic and political factors. It was the subject of the late John Garang's doctoral thesis, with Garang, the first leader of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), envisaging a Jonglei Canal that would be as beneficial to South Sudan as to the downstream nations of Egypt and Sudan. His dream never came to fruition. Today, political uncertainties in Sudan and South Sudan still endanger the would-be Congo-Nile project. “As long as there is civil war in South Sudan and political instability in Sudan, I personally cannot see how the proposed Congo-Nile project or any other alternative scheme could be feasible,” former Sudanese prime minister and leader of the Sudanese opposition Umma Party Sadig Al-Mahdi told the Weekly. “We in the Nile Basin area need to work out the means of ensuring that our countries enjoy democracy first before such mega-development projects can be achieved.” It is estimated that the completion of the Jonglei Canal would increase the area of cultivatable land in Egypt by two million acres. Nevertheless, there are ecological considerations, and the cost of the environmental consequences of the construction of the canal for South Sudan has not been taken into account. Environmentalists warn of a potential drop in groundwater levels and the drying of grazing lands if the Jonglei Canal were constructed, a disastrous repercussion for the ethnic Dinka, Nuer, and Shilluk cattlemen, whose herding culture could be seriously compromised and perhaps even obliterated. Water scarcity, in short, is the defining geographical feature of Egypt and huge swathes of North Africa and the Middle East. Efficient water management is likewise a challenge that the countries of the Nile Basin must come to terms with. The Nile Basin's well-watered upstream nations of Equatorial Africa are complimentary to the arid downstream nations of Egypt and Sudan. The nutrient-rich silt from the Ethiopian Highlands discharged into the Blue Nile has transformed Egypt into the richest irrigated farmland in the world since time immemorial. Egypt has also changed beyond recognition since the construction of the Aswan High Dam in the 1960s. Among the factors that have recommended the Congo River project to the Egyptian authorities is the fact that the Congo River has been spared the crippling salinisation and the water-logging of rivers and waterways in drier, thirstier lands. The Congo is free of the Nile's seasonal flooding, even though the inhabitants of the Congo Basin scarcely use the river for agricultural purposes. In Egypt, a rapidly rising population and depletion of agricultural resources has created an unstable equilibrium in which the fertilising silt of the river no longer reaches farmland and the once-fertile soils of the Egyptian countryside have become dependent on artificial fertilisers. At the same time, the Aswan High Dam's hydro-electric turbines have regulated the flow of the River Nile and provided power, with Egypt also being spared the ravages of the 1979-1988 droughts that devastated swathes of once-fertile territory in Ethiopia and Sudan. River silt, the secret of Egypt's fertility, comes directly from the rich volcanic deposits of the Ethiopian Highlands via the Blue Nile. The White Nile (strictly speaking, the stretch of the river originating at Lake No, at the confluence of Bahr Al-Jabal and Bahr Al-Ghazal in South Sudan) provides no silt and relatively little water. The fertile topsoil washed away in torrential downpours in the Ethiopian Highlands has historically ended up in Egypt. The White Nile, in sharp contrast, contains no silt and is shallow, with its sluggish flow providing Egypt with barely 15 per cent of its water. One of the aims of the proposed Congo-Nile project is to divert more water to the White Nile. The project also aims to correct the unstable equilibrium created by the construction of the Aswan High Dam. The Mountain Nile, or Bahr Al-Jabal, winds through rapids before stagnating in the Sudd region of South Sudan. Today, the region surrounding the Bahr Al-Jabal, the Bahr al-Ghazal (Gazelle River) and the Bahr Al-Zaraf (Giraffe River) is swarming with rival militias roaming and marauding in the vicinity of Lake No and northwards along the borders of Uganda, South Sudan, the DRC and the Central African Republic. It is against this backdrop that a study undertaken by the Egyptian Mineral Resources Authority concerning the connecting of the Congo and Nile Rivers envisages three possible scenarios. However, all three have been pronounced impossible to implement, given the exorbitant costs and ongoing civil wars in South Sudan, eastern DRC and the Central African Republic. The first, a 424-km canal with a water level altitude differential of 1,500 metres, has been discounted as unfeasible. The second scenario, a 940-km canal with an altitude differential of 400 metres, is similarly regarded as too difficult to implement. The third, a 600-km canal with an altitude differential of only 200 km, would necessitate the provision of at least four successive water-pumping stations and is widely viewed as the most viable of the proposals. The country's precarious hydrological needs have forced Egypt to look southwards for answers to its water scarcity crisis. To overcome the vulnerability that now besets Egypt as far as water is concerned, close collaboration between Cairo and other Nile Basin nations has become a prerequisite. The deployment of new water technologies is also imperative. But the beneficiaries of these proposed projects cannot be Egypt alone, as most Egyptian experts agree that only a win-win solution to the Nile Basin's water management challenges, buttressed with the help of transformational technological innovations and regional cooperation, can resolve the water scarcity crisis. A WORKABLE DREAM: The mastery of the water resources of the River Nile is not an unworkable dream, and the idea of diverting 112 billion cubic metres of water from the River Congo to the Nile is not entirely implausible. While the Nile might be Africa's and the world's longest river, the Congo is the continent's mightiest. The river is 4,370 km long, or two-thirds the length of the Nile. Its annual water resources constitute nearly 1,293 billion cubic metres, or nearly 14 times those of the Nile. The exploitation of the Congo's hydroelectric potential by Egyptian, Western, Chinese or other entrepreneurs must not be viewed as impossible, most experts acknowledge, though the impoverished states of the Nile and Congo Basins cannot afford potential white elephants. Foreign investment and private capital is obligatory, experts say, even as the exploitation of the vast water resources of the region must not be seen as a narrowly financial or political exercise. The proponents of the Congo-Nile project are thinking five years ahead and perhaps a decade or even a generation away. The DRC consumes 12.8 billion cubic metres of the fresh water of the river, or 1.4 per cent of all its water resources. This leaves 887.2 billion cubic metres to flow from the DRC alone to the Atlantic Ocean without being used. This is a waste of precious resources, even though the environmental repercussions of diverting it will need to be painstakingly probed. “No technical problem is insoluble. There is no denying that there are serious challenges in implementation when it comes to the Congo-Nile project, but in this day and age there are always technical solutions to geological and geographic problems. The real obstructions are economic and political,” Mahmoud Abou-Zeid, a former minister of irrigation and water resources, told the Weekly. “There are several alternatives to the Congo-Nile project, and most are economically viable. We were already working on some of these alternatives when I was minister. We were working in conjunction with the Ethiopian and Sudanese governments, for example, and there was talk of constructing a canal to run parallel to the White Nile between South Sudan and Sudan in order to exploit the headwaters of Lake Victoria gushing towards South Sudan. “The Ethiopian government likewise offered several alternatives that entailed increasing the flow of water of the White Nile from tributaries of the Nile in Ethiopia that are distinct from the Blue Nile, the source of 85 per cent of Egypt's water,” Abou-Zeid said. The former minister cautioned that the wrong dam in the wrong location could be a disastrous misadventure. He is a highly respected hydrological expert whose long experience as minister of irrigation and water has earned him the respect of many in Egypt and the neighbouring Nile Basin countries. Technical and environmental drawbacks could be drowned out by a nationalistic mood and the need to secure enough water to meet Egypt's needs, he warned. Today, the rusting remains of the giant German-built excavation machine, nicknamed “Sarah”, stands as a reminder to the shutting down of the Jonglei Canal project in South Sudan. Sarah was hit by a missile in the course of the Sudanese civil war, and today she lies in the jungle area, as if frozen in time. For Abou-Zeid, exploration of the potential of the White Nile presents an ever-evolving balance of challenges and opportunities. Some 240 km of the Jonglei Canal, out of a total of 360 km, were excavated, but most of this is today in a sorry state. “I am optimistic. Perhaps, we in Egypt need not go as far as the River Congo. There are several other alternatives much closer to home that are less politically problematic. Take the Jonglei Canal, for instance, which is about 70 per cent complete. We could resuscitate the Jonglei Canal project. It would be far less costly than the Congo-Nile project, and far less grandiose,” Abou-Zeid said. Perhaps, the story of Sarah will have a happy ending after all.
