Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan signed an agreement to reopen Eastern Nile Technical Regional Office.f4v - YouTube: ""
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The Protection of the Nile and its Riparian
Monday, November 12, 2012
Saturday, November 10, 2012
Ethiopia: Agreement reached on Eastern Nile Basin cooperation - Sudan Tribune: Plural news and views on Sudan
November 9, 2012 (ADDIS ABABA) - Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan have agreed to resume jointly working on organizing sustainable management, utilization and development of the Nile waters under the Eastern Nile Basin.
The agreement was reached after water Ministers and representatives of the three countries held a meeting in Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, on Thursday.
Accordingly, the parties have agreed to resume their tripartite cooperation which had been suspended for some time due some differences created on reaching a binding agreement on legal related issues.
Representatives from South Sudan have also attended the meeting.
According to the Ethiopian official television, member states during the meeting agreed to discuss and approve South Sudan joins the Eastern Nile Technical Regional Office (ENTRO) .
"The agreement ensures the mutual benefits of the three nations," Ethiopian Minister of Water and Energy, Alemayehu Tegenu said
Egyptian and Sudanese representatives also said the agreement indicates that the water resources should no more be the source of conflict but a source of regional cooperation and mutual benefit.
Last month, ENTRO celebrated 10 years anniversary of the Eastern Nile cooperation among the member states namely Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan.
Ethiopia hosts ENTRO, the executive body of the Eastern Nile Subsidiary Action Program (ENSAP), and puts to effect Project Management Units of ENSAP’s investment projects and implementation to a number of basin-wide capacity building projects.
Ethiopia, Egypt, Sudan agree to resume Eastern Nile Basin cooperation
| Ethiopia, Egypt, Sudan agree to resume Eastern Nile Basin cooperation |  |  |  |
 Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan have agreed to resume their tripartite cooperation under the Eastern Nile Basin. The three nations had devised a joint institutional framework and been working together on Nile waters conservation and utilization since 1999. Water resource ministers of the three nations have endorsed a resolution by their technical experts for the resumption of the operations of the Eastern Nile Technical Regional Office (ENTRO) which had not been functional for a period of time. Representatives of the Republic of South Sudan were also present during the agreement. The Ministers also agreed on the occasion to discuss and approve in the near future South Sudan’s membership to ENTRO. In a joint press briefing they gave after the meeting, the Ministers highlighted the pivotal role of the accord for conservation and utilization the Nile waters. Ethiopian Minister of Water and Energy, Alemayehu Tegenu said the agreement ensures the mutual benefits of the three nations, which his Egyptian and Sudanese counterparts also affirmed. |
Monday, October 29, 2012
Sharing the River Nile water - The Egyptian Gazette
Egypt’s share of the River Nile water is likely to decline, as affected by an ambitious Ethiopian plan to establish a hydroelectric dam with a storage capacity of some 74 billion cubic metres of water.
Egypt gets 95 per cent of its water supplies from the Nile. Repercussions of the dam on the country are expected to decrease the flow of the water in the Nile, especially when the level is already low in the winter agricultural season and High Dam power generation is reduced by 20 per cent.
Ever since the project’s foundation stone was laid l8 months ago, it has triggered controversy over Egyptian water security, already affected by limited water resources, a growing population and challenges of climatic change, such that the per capita quota of water has dropped to 650 square metres.
The Nile water file gained centre stage during the former Mubarak regime, but the then leadership’s handling of it backfired in the light of policies that turned the country’s back on the African Continent.
Now that after the revolution foreign policy has been correctly orientated towards Africa, greater understanding between downstream countries and Ethiopia and the rest of the Nile Basin countries is being sought.
A committee comprising experts from three countries is currently working on a thorough study of the pros and cons of the gigantic project. It is expected to render a final report to the respective governments by next February, in the light of which political decisions are to be taken.
Diplomatic channels and popular initiatives stand today as feasible options to reach middle ground, where the interests of the Nile Basin countries are observed while safeguarding Egypt’s historic rights to its share of the Nile water.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Egyptian Minister: Final report on Ethiopian dam in February | Egypt Independent
Jok Biong A · University Of Khartoum
Will Egypt accepts to give water to other African nations if Nile river runs to the South? African basin nations must stop and confront Egypt from thinking such ways of old era of colonilas times. Ethiopia and other African nations have full right in using Nile water.
Levar Mitchell · Top commenter · Norfolk State University
Well said! I wonder, does Egypt think it can stand against Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, etc? They will have something to say about this too. Ethiopia is also a strategic ally of the United States. Any belligerence on the part of Egyptians can endanger the billions of dollars they get from the US.
Teweldebrhan Kifle · Subscribe · Top commenter
Levar Mitchell,
Military confrontation has never been a solution to any sort of problem in this world. But man qua man is the most stupid creature ever existed and has failed to learn from his own and past mistakes. if Egypt intends to invoke that card, it would be an all out failure on their part. My hope is that Egyptians would not fall into such trap based on bogus grounds. "no one who had tried that(war) has survived to tell the story" was the response of the late PM Meles Zenawi to a certain media man. Nothing can change the truth that Ethiopia is entitled to its waters.
Levar Mitchell · Top commenter · Norfolk State University
This is the worst bunch of crap I've ever heard in my life. Ethiopia can do whatever she wants with her own resources. If Egypt wants to invoke so-called international law, then Ethiopia can do the same to protect her sovereignty. Ethiopia can give water to whoever she wants to. What does giving water to Israel have to do with Egypt? Mind your business, Egypt. Stop being self-entitled spoiled brats. You have taken on the mentality of your former colonial oppressors, Great Britain. The world is much bigger than you. There are plenty of desert countries who find various ways to get water. The arrogance of Egyptians astounds me!
gmoges (signed in using yahoo)
I can't be amazed by the so called international rules and regulations that the Brithish had it over a century ago, please let poor Ethiopia use her resources and feed her people. I heard Egypt has more than 5 billion US in aid/ free money every year, would this not enough to live as free loader. I wish if MELES would have lived longer at least he has the stamina to say I say so and we would have seen the reprisals where it would take us.
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Egypt pushes Ethiopia to scrap Nile dam
Egypt increasingly views Ethiopia's plan to build a massive 6,000-megawatt hydroelectric dam on the Nile River as a threat to its national security because it will seriously cut the Arab state's water supplies.
Egypt depends on the Nile for virtually all of its water and is mounting a major diplomatic and economic campaign to scupper the plan. "Even direct military action by Egypt cannot be ruled out," observed the U.S. global security consultancy Stratfor.
Both countries have undergone major political upheavals recently, which have added to the tension in a long-running battle for control of the world's longest river which rises in the Ethiopian highlands.
Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood now controls the presidency and Parliament following the February 2001 downfall of longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak and is locked in a struggle for supremacy with the military.
Longtime Ethiopian ruler, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, as harsh a dictator as Mubarak and whose ethnic Tigray group has long dominated the military, died Aug. 20, leaving a leadership vacuum and internal rivalries.
Meles, who came to power in 1991, had long opposed the domination of the Nile's water flow by Egypt, and to a lesser extent Sudan, under colonial agreements that left the upstream African states -- Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, the Democratic republic of Congo, Rwanda and Tanzania -- with almost no control of the river's resources.
He found Cairo's hard-line position on the Nile particularly galling because 85 percent of the river's water flows from the Ethiopian highlands.
There were years or fruitless negotiations between Cairo and the upstream states in the Nile Basin initiative, a forum set up in 1999 by all the Nile states.
But in 2010, Egypt found its domination of the river heavily challenged.
Ethiopia and four African states -- later joined by two more -- threw out a 1959 agreement imposed by British colonial rulers that gave Cairo control of 90 percent of the Nile's water and veto power over dam construction upstream that would limit its water supplies.
They contend they need more water because of burgeoning populations, industrialization and agricultural projects.
The fall of Mubarak, who had fiercely opposed surrendering any of Egypt's control of the Nile, left Cairo adrift.
Meles, who had already built seven small dams on the Nile, took advantage of Egypt's disarray to announce his plan for the $5 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile and start work on it.
"Cairo fears that once the dam is completed in 2017, it will take two to three years, depending on rainfall, to fill up the 67 billion cubic meter reservoir, which could reduce the amount of water that flows into Egypt by 25 percent," Stratfor observed.
"After the reservoir fills up, there is no guarantee that Egypt will maintain its present share of the water, and Ethiopia is already planning multiple agricultural projects on Nile tributary rivers flowing from the Ethiopian highlands.
"Speeding up the diversion of water would put added pressure on Cairo," Stratfor noted.
So far Cairo has focused primarily on diplomatic efforts with Ethiopia and its African allies, concentrating on these countries' parliaments whose agreement on a new water-sharing arrangement will be necessary if it is to be legally binding to supersede the 1959 agreement.
According to documents released by WiliLeaks in September, the Egyptian and Sudanese governments had planned to attack the Grand Renaissance Dam.
WiliLeaks claimed the documents originated with Stratfor. The Texas-based consultancy's computer system was penetrated before the leaks and that may have been how the alleged documents were uncovered.
One 2010 email quoted a "high-level Egyptian source" as saying "we are discussing military cooperation with Sudan" against Ethiopia, establishing a base there from which to fly Egyptian Special Forces to destroy the Ethiopian project.
Egypt denied it had such a plan. But Stratfor noted that if diplomacy fails, "Egypt's next most likely approach is to support proxy militant groups against Ethiopia" as it did in the 1970s and 1980s.
Stratfor said direct military action "was the least likely approach and one Cairo would undertake only if the dam was completed and significantly interrupted the water flow.
"Such a course will also largely depend on Egypt's new leadership ... but whatever its political inclination, a large-scale reduction in water from the Nile would be intolerable to any Egyptian government."
Egypt depends on the Nile for virtually all of its water and is mounting a major diplomatic and economic campaign to scupper the plan. "Even direct military action by Egypt cannot be ruled out," observed the U.S. global security consultancy Stratfor.
Both countries have undergone major political upheavals recently, which have added to the tension in a long-running battle for control of the world's longest river which rises in the Ethiopian highlands.
Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood now controls the presidency and Parliament following the February 2001 downfall of longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak and is locked in a struggle for supremacy with the military.
Longtime Ethiopian ruler, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, as harsh a dictator as Mubarak and whose ethnic Tigray group has long dominated the military, died Aug. 20, leaving a leadership vacuum and internal rivalries.
Meles, who came to power in 1991, had long opposed the domination of the Nile's water flow by Egypt, and to a lesser extent Sudan, under colonial agreements that left the upstream African states -- Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, the Democratic republic of Congo, Rwanda and Tanzania -- with almost no control of the river's resources.
He found Cairo's hard-line position on the Nile particularly galling because 85 percent of the river's water flows from the Ethiopian highlands.
There were years or fruitless negotiations between Cairo and the upstream states in the Nile Basin initiative, a forum set up in 1999 by all the Nile states.
But in 2010, Egypt found its domination of the river heavily challenged.
Ethiopia and four African states -- later joined by two more -- threw out a 1959 agreement imposed by British colonial rulers that gave Cairo control of 90 percent of the Nile's water and veto power over dam construction upstream that would limit its water supplies.
They contend they need more water because of burgeoning populations, industrialization and agricultural projects.
The fall of Mubarak, who had fiercely opposed surrendering any of Egypt's control of the Nile, left Cairo adrift.
Meles, who had already built seven small dams on the Nile, took advantage of Egypt's disarray to announce his plan for the $5 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile and start work on it.
"Cairo fears that once the dam is completed in 2017, it will take two to three years, depending on rainfall, to fill up the 67 billion cubic meter reservoir, which could reduce the amount of water that flows into Egypt by 25 percent," Stratfor observed.
"After the reservoir fills up, there is no guarantee that Egypt will maintain its present share of the water, and Ethiopia is already planning multiple agricultural projects on Nile tributary rivers flowing from the Ethiopian highlands.
"Speeding up the diversion of water would put added pressure on Cairo," Stratfor noted.
So far Cairo has focused primarily on diplomatic efforts with Ethiopia and its African allies, concentrating on these countries' parliaments whose agreement on a new water-sharing arrangement will be necessary if it is to be legally binding to supersede the 1959 agreement.
According to documents released by WiliLeaks in September, the Egyptian and Sudanese governments had planned to attack the Grand Renaissance Dam.
WiliLeaks claimed the documents originated with Stratfor. The Texas-based consultancy's computer system was penetrated before the leaks and that may have been how the alleged documents were uncovered.
One 2010 email quoted a "high-level Egyptian source" as saying "we are discussing military cooperation with Sudan" against Ethiopia, establishing a base there from which to fly Egyptian Special Forces to destroy the Ethiopian project.
Egypt denied it had such a plan. But Stratfor noted that if diplomacy fails, "Egypt's next most likely approach is to support proxy militant groups against Ethiopia" as it did in the 1970s and 1980s.
Stratfor said direct military action "was the least likely approach and one Cairo would undertake only if the dam was completed and significantly interrupted the water flow.
"Such a course will also largely depend on Egypt's new leadership ... but whatever its political inclination, a large-scale reduction in water from the Nile would be intolerable to any Egyptian government."
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Read more: http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Energy-Resources/2012/10/19/Egypt-pushes-Ethiopia-to-scrap-Nile-dam/UPI-74581350658245/#ixzz29welwmZT
Saturday, October 20, 2012
Is a war over the Nile still imminent? Mmegi Online ::
Until the recent positive signs of cooperation between some of the Nile riparian states, disputes between the downstream and upper riparian states over rights to the waters of the Nile have been a contentious issue for centuries.
The outcome of the Nile water negotiations could have profound consequences for the region and the African continent. In May 2010, five upstream states signed a Cooperative Framework Agreement (CFA) to access more water from the Nile. This move was strongly opposed by Egypt and Sudan. Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania were original signatories with Burundi signing in February 2011. The CFA is designed to replace both the 1929 treaty and the 1959 bilateral agreement between Sudan and Egypt, which is now considered to be the main bone of contention among the riparian states. Egypt dismissed the CFA out of hand.
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Subsequently, Ethiopia began to construct the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which is expected to be a 63 billion cubic metre reservoir. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam will be Africa's largest hydroelectric facility and its construction started 40km upstream from Sudan on the Ethiopian portion of the Blue Nile. Although Ethiopia has agreed not to use the reservoir for irrigation, the new dam has become a problem for Egypt.
According to a recent WikiLeaks report, Sudan agreed to host an Egyptian airbase in Kuris in the west of its Darfur region. Consequently, this base could be used to launch an Egyptian assault on the Ethiopian dam, if diplomatic efforts fail.
The WikiLeaks report, emanating from Stratfor, a private intelligence agency, also claimed that Egyptian officials said: 'If it comes to a crisis, we will send a jet to bomb the dam and come back in one day, as simple as that. Or we can send our special forces in to block/sabotage the dam.'
It is clear that Ethiopia's giant hydroelectric dam project, which is underway, signals the seriousness of regional resentment over the previous treaties on sharing the waters of the Nile. Egypt and Sudan hold absolute rights to 100% of the river's water under the treaty signed in 1929 between Egypt and Britain, which was then the colonial power in Kenya, Sudan and Uganda. This treaty was reinforced by the 1959 agreement between Egypt and Sudan where the Nile waters were divided between the two downstream nations. Both the 1929 and the 1959 agreements were rejected by many of these countries after they had attained independence.
Amid the mistrust, suspicion, controversy and threat of conflict over the use of the Nile waters, on 8 October 2012 a ten-member committee of experts and professionals from Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia began to discuss the possible impact of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. The committee also visited the construction site, in accordance with Article 3(8) of the CFA that states the principle 'that the Nile Basin states exchange information on planned measures through the Nile River Basin Commission as part of the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI)'. This is also in accordance with Article 7, which states: '[I]n pursuance of their cooperation concerning the use, development and protection of the Nile River Basin and its water resources, Nile Basin states shall on a regular basis exchange readily available and relevant data and information on existing measures and on the condition of water resources of the Basin.'
At the same time, on the sidelines of the meetings, the Nile Tripartite Committee composed of experts drawn from Ethiopia, Egypt, Sudan and four international experts, including the International Panel of Experts (IPoE), also met. The objective of the meeting was to continue studying the possible impact of the dam on downstream countries, particularly Egypt and Sudan.
Tensions in the Horn of Africa are of great concern to the international community, due to its volatility. Water scarcity, food insecurity, climate-induced migration and poverty are increasingly being experienced in many parts of the riparian states. Conflicts emerging here might spread political, social and economic instability to surrounding areas. Conflict is likely to emerge as long as the downstream states believe their interests in the shared water resource are threatened by the actions of the upstream states. In addition, conflict over the Nile's waters could also fan existing conflicts in the region, making them more complex and harder to address.
However, instead of conflict, the Nile waters could lead to greater interdependence through cooperation and mutual benefits. By coming together to jointly manage their shared water resources, countries could build trust and prevent conflict. In the face of potential conflict and regional instability, the Nile basin countries should continue to seek cooperative solutions. The political will to develop a new legal framework for managing the Nile should continue.
Finally, it should be noted that the only promising way of avoiding future conflicts in the utilisation of the Nile waters remains focusing on a systematic collaboration among all stakeholders that would maximise the mutual benefits for all sides while contributing to the social, economic and political development of the region.
DEBAY TADESSE is Senior Researcher, Conflict Prevention and Risk Analysis Division at ISS Addis Ababa (Institute Of Security Studies)
DEBAY TADESSE is Senior Researcher, Conflict Prevention and Risk Analysis Division at ISS Addis Ababa (Institute Of Security Studies)
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