Concern over water resources rumbled on throughout 2010 and will spill over into 2011, reports Reem Leila The River Nile has increasingly become the focus of bitter debate and, many predict, potential conflict. The picture is further complicated by the likely secession of the south of Sudan, which will force Egypt to factor yet another component into an already complex equation. Egypt's future water strategy includes upgrading water resources and nurturing closer ties with all Nile Basin countries -- Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, which provides 85 per cent of Egypt's 55.5 billion cubic metres of water, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda -- while prioritising stability in its southern neighbour Sudan, something that is viewed as an essential component of national security. The Egyptian Fund for Technical Cooperation with Africa will provide upstream countries with LE100 million for development projects, training programmes and the construction of wells. Water expert Diaa El-Qousi stresses that Egypt's cooperation with other Nile Basin countries is based on a sense of neighbourhood and an understanding of mutual interests and is likely to be an ongoing process that will encompass educational, irrigation, electricity, agriculture and industry-based projects. Long-running negotiations over the division of Nile water broke down in acrimony last May when five upstream countries -- Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda -- signed the River Nile Basin Cooperative Framework agreement. The argument pitches the seven countries which furnish the water of the Nile with Egypt and Sudan, through which those waters flow. El-Qousi says Egypt has for long been taking "covert action" to resolve the dispute and warns that Egypt's quota of Nile waters is a "redline" that it will not allow to be broached. May's treaty is scheduled to come into force in May 2011. In the interim political and diplomatic negotiations to resolve the dispute will be intense. "The Nile can provide water for all of the countries that depend on it. Even if upstream states managed to build dams -- and it is far from certain they can -- they will hold less than five billion cubic metres of the River Nile's 1,660 billion cubic metres and will not affect Egypt's share of the water," says Ibrahim Nasreddin of Cairo University's Institute for African Studies. "So there is no need to panic." "The River Nile flows north. The depth of the Nile's 70 tributaries ranges between 200-500 metres. All tributaries located in Ethiopia, which provides Egypt with more than 85 per cent of its water, are 500 metres deep. It would be impossible to build anything similar to the High Dam in only 10 months, yet that is what would have to happen if the construction was not to be washed away by the annual flood. Already this year two dams have been destroyed by the floods." A 20-year-old feasibility study, a cooperative venture between some of the Nile's source countries and donor states, to build 50 dams on the River Nile over 50 years has not seen any headway due to the high cost of these dams. According to Nasreddin, the projects would cost in excess of $40 billion. "None of the African states can afford this. They won't be able to repay loans of such an amount. You have to ask whether donor countries would be prepared to provide such enormous funding for just five billion cubic metres of water." Only last year, Nasreddin points out, the Takazi dam which China had been constructing on the Stet River at the Eritrean, Sudanese and Ethiopian borders, was submerged by water before completion. And even if dams are built, claims Nasreddin, Egypt will benefit most since they will prevent mud from reaching the Aswan High Dam thus lowering the pressure on the existing structure. Egypt's immediate focus will be on issues deriving from the ecology of the Nile Basin and on prospects for economic integration among the riparian countries that provide Nile water in a way that will ensure the maximum utilisation of resources. Egypt is taking steps towards implementing joint projects with Nile Basin countries and is seeking agreement on future plans. Within this context, economic and trade relations between Egypt and Ethiopia are developing rapidly. The volume of Egyptian investments in Ethiopia is expected to increase to more than $1.1 billion. A meeting scheduled for 25 January in Kenya will assess the possible repercussions of the May agreement signed by five upstream states this year.
