As the terminus country of the Nile’s 6,700km journey to the Mediterranean, Egypt is uniquely dependent on the goodwill of its southern neighbours, who have grown increasingly resentful that the bulk of the river’s water is used by Egyptians. They want to break with treaties dating from 1929 and 1959 giving Egypt and Sudan the lion’s share of the water – 55.5bn and 18.5bn cubic metres respectively – or almost all the river’s flow.
In April, the 10 countries that make up the Nile Basin Initiative failed to reach agreement over water-sharing. The initiative groups Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.
A few days later, Moufid Shehab, Egypt’s minister of parliamentary affairs, warned the Nile “is a matter of life or death that cannot be put up for negotiation”.
Hyperbole aside, the Nile is crucial to life in a country that is 95 per cent desert. Rainfall is very low and the Nile supplies almost all the country’s surface water.
Egypt is worried that five of its neighbours signed an agreement separately last May. The Nile River Basin Co-operative Framework is open for signature until May 2011 and has been rejected by Egypt and Sudan. Recent diplomatic activity has focused on wooing back some of these countries and encouraging a compromise.
Senior officials have held talks with Uganda and Burundi, offering investment, aid and technical expertise.
But not everyone is easily courted. In November, Meles Zenawi, the prime minister of Ethiopia, accused Cairo of backing anti-government rebels in his country, a claim denied by President Hosni Mubarak. Ethiopia which is leading the sub-Saharan African challenge, inaugurated a new dam last May on one of the Nile’s tributaries.
Egypt is also concerned about a potential new state on the Nile: South Sudan. Until recently, Cairo opposed the partition of Sudan, expected to take place as a result of the referendum scheduled for January 2011. According to a US embassy cable revealed by WikiLeaks, as late as October 2009, Egyptian officials tried to persuade the Obama administration to postpone the referendum by four to six years.
“The result would be the creation of a non-viable state that could threaten Egypt’s access to the Nile waters,” an Egyptian diplomat is quoted as saying.
Since summer 2010, it is estimated that several hundreds of millions of dollars in Egyptian aid have been allocated to South Sudan, along with an expansion of official Egyptian presence in Juba, the capital of the south.
Some say this is only making up for lost time and a lack of initiative in Sudan’s multiple crises.
“Egypt is an impossible situation,” says an analyst who preferred to remain anonymous. “It can ill-afford to alienate an independent South Sudan, but can’t afford to alienate the north either. Egyptian discourse shows a weakness of assets and a lack of strategy with achievable objectives.”
Beyond trying to break the diplomatic impasse over a new water-sharing agreement, Egypt is also quietly making a radical overhaul of the way it manages its own water. About 85 per cent is used in agriculture, where conservation is in dire need of improvement.
Although official figures put water efficiency at about 80 per cent, experts say 50 per cent is a more realistic assessment.
The government has begun to ban the cultivation of water-intensive crops such as rice in some areas, and is introducing new water management plans under an EU-funded scheme. In September, Amin Abaza, the agriculture minister, said E£60bn ($10.3bn) is to be spent over the next 10 to 15 years to upgrade the irrigation network. The aim is to reduce waste in a system that still relies on inundating surfaces with water. This leads to losses through both seepage and evaporation.
The investment will overhaul irrigation systems and extend canals to allow for land reclamation. It will also allow for private sector participation in projects such as the expansion and maintenance of irrigation canals, with cost recovery coming from water delivery charges, although there is no plan to charge for the water itself.
In the medium term, the solution being favoured is an increased private sector role – from wastewater treatment to distribution – which the government hopes will encourage conservation.
“Egyptians used to consider water a gift from God,” says Ahmad Badr, a water management expert for the European Union who is advising the government. “But this culture is changing. The government is saying no – water may be a gift from God, but the treatment of the water isn’t. You have to pay for that.”
