Nile meeting agrees on redistribution plan

Officials from 10 African nations met in Khartoum over the weekend to discuss plans for the redistribution of the Nile waters, PANA news agency reported. The meeting including cabinet ministers from Egypt, Ethiopia, Sudan and the six Great Lakes states and was backed by the World Bank, the United Nations, the US government and several European countries. Agreements reached this week on the Nile waters included hydro-electric power development, power sharing cooperatives, river regulation and water resources management. Agreements are expected to be finalised at an extraordinary ministerial meeting in December, reported PANA. The new policies will cancel out Egyptian monopoly of the waters under a 1959 treaty. Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan will form one development block, and the remaining six Great Lakes member states (Burundi, DRC, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda) will form the other joint programme. The US-based Stratford Global Intelligence (SGI) August Update said Cairo - which had traditionally monopolised the waters and prevented development in the region - had shown support for redistribution plans because regional stability was needed in order to improve economic growth in Egypt. SGI said Egyptian foreign policy had necessarily shifted in the face of a strengthening South Africa, which was building up its military strength and “transforming itself into the world’s economic gateway to the continent”. In response, Cairo wants to strengthen its own economic and political position and has recently focused on warming relations with Ethiopia and Sudan, the SGI report said. The SGI report said under a contentious 1959 treaty with Sudan, Egypt holds the rights to 87 percent of the Nile’s waters, with Sudan holding the remaining 13 percent. Sudan cannot increase development along the river without Egyptian consent. Even though 86 percent of the Nile’s water originates in the Ethiopian highlands, Ethiopia receives no share of the water under the present agreement, the report said. The monopoly of the waters had put a strain on regional relations, with Addis Ababa claiming that Cairo provided military intelligence, training and arms to separatist rebels, contributing to the eventual partitioning of Ethiopia and Eritrea; and with regional claims that Cairo backed rebel groups in Ethiopia, Sudan and Somalia. But “the government’s support for regional insurgents has declined recently”, said the report, with Cairo making moves towards regional peace initiatives, like Sudan and Somalia.