Ethiopia has accused Egypt of using stalling techniques in order to delay the Nile Basin Initiative, a regional power scheme aimed at sharing water resources from the Nile River.
“Egypt has employed a delaying tactic which has dragged the negotiating process,” Shimeles Kemal, a spokesman for the Ethiopian government, told reporters today in Addis Ababa. Six other downstream countries plan to sign a new accord that will redistribute rights to water from the Nile although the two countries with the largest stake in the Nile, Egypt and Sudan, have refused.
News sources said that Egypt has reportedly said it would withdraw from the proposal if the seven downstream states sign the accord. Egypt claims 55.5 billion cubic meters of the Nile’s annual flow under a 1959 treaty with Sudan, according to Egypt’s State Information Service website. That agreement didn’t include Ethiopia, which is the source of about 85% of the river’s water.
Ethiopia will sign the Nile Cooperative Framework Agreement with Uganda, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Kenya, and Rwanda by May 14, said Shimeles. The accord would leave open a controversial provision on water security in the hopes that Sudan and Egypt may be persuaded to return to the talks, he said.
The Nile Basin Initiative and Nile Equatorial Lakes Subsidiary Action Program in collaboration with the AfDB and representatives from Burundi, DR Congo, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda, launched the implementation of the Interconnection of Electricity Grids Project of the Nile Equatorial Lakes countries September 2009.
The four-year project, whose work on ground is expected to start late 2010 or early 2011, will connect Tanzania to its neighbors through Kenya and through the Rusumo Falls hydropower project shared with Burundi and Rwanda.
