Four African countries signed the Nile Basin Initiative, a regional power scheme aimed at sharing water resources from the Nile River, but Egypt is threatening to block dams and other projects upstream on the Nile which would force further negotiations.
Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda signed the deal on May 14 creating a permanent commission to manage the Nile’s waters, with Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Kenya expected to sign the agreement within a year. However, major opposition is coming from the two major holders of the Nile, Egypt and Sudan, who chose to boycott the discussions.
“Any project that takes away from the river’s flow has to be approved by Egypt and Sudan in accordance with international treaties,” Egypt’s Water Resources and Irrigation Minister Mohamed Nasreddin Allam said to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
Egypt maintains its right to block any upstream projects, including dams, as per a 1929 colonial pact between Egypt and Britain that gave Egypt veto power over upstream projects as well as access to most of the Nile waters. The new commission is challenging this colonial-era accord to evenly distribute the waters among all of the Nile River countries, also accruing the right to veto energy and irrigation projects in signatory states.
Egypt is eyeing East Africa’s hydro projects as it fears that more projects will hinder the river’s flow. However, as the Nile is the only river in the world to flow south to north, it would appear that Egypt is not in a position to leverage an outdated pact.
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