Nile deal brings countries to boiling point over water

Egypt's arable land stretches out over the map of North Africa like a green kite on a desert background.

The string uncoils northwards from the Aswan high dam until it reaches the Nile Delta, where it opens into a triangle to meet the Mediterranean Sea.

This narrow fertile strip, fed by the world's longest river, is where Egypt lives. Eighty million people are crammed into less than 5 per cent of the land. In most of the country it never rains and 90 per cent of the water on which the civilisation that built the pyramids depends comes from the river.

As Herodotus observed in the 5th century BC, Egypt is a gift of the Nile. And it is a gift Cairo has worked assiduously to ensure nobody takes away.

Two treaties signed more than half a century ago gave Egypt the lion's share of the water from the Nile. But those deals set up an epic imbalance of resources that has led analysts to look to this river system as the likely theatre for the first of the long-heralded water wars.

Five of the 10 Nile basin countries have signed up to an agreement that would give them a greater share of the waters which the Egyptian press has described as a "death sentence".

The White Nile rises in East Africa in Lake Victoria and drains through Uganda into Sudan where it meets in Khartoum with the Blue Nile flowing from Ethiopia's Lake Tana.

An exchange of letters between the British ambassador and the Prime Minister of Egypt on May 7, 1929 was sufficient to conclude the Nile Water agreement.

It read: "No irrigation or power works are to be constructed on the River Nile or its tributaries, or on the lakes from which it flows ... which would entail prejudice to the interests of Egypt."

In other words Egypt had monopoly of the waters. On behalf of its colonial possessions - Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda - Britain, which was primarily concerned with the Suez Canal and the passage to India, signed away their most precious resource.

Egypt had the right to veto any project along the Nile and full rights of inspection.

In 1959, this deal was overtaken by a new agreement between Egypt and Sudan splitting the waters 75 per cent to 25 per cent and guaranteeing Cairo "full control of the river".

The results of this control are nowhere more clearly seen than at Lake Nasser, a man-made reservoir 550km-long, created when Egypt completed the Aswan high dam. The country's largest engineering project took six years to build and another five years to fill.

Some 55.5 billion cu m of water gush from the Aswan dam into Egypt annually. It has enabled Cairo to regulate the life-giving annual flood, to irrigate its otherwise parched landscape, and at the point it was finished supplied half the country's electricity needs.

With control of the Nile, Egypt's agriculture has expanded fivefold.

It also marks the effective border between downstream development and upstream poverty. Today, Egypt is about 10 times wealthier than Ethiopia.

"Egypt's historic rights to Nile waters are a matter of life and death. We will not compromise them," said Moufid Shehab, the Egyptian Minister of Legal Affairs.

Countries like Ethiopia, which accounts for 85 per cent of the river's flow, never recognised the "colonial relic" treaties and are seeking to right what they see as a historical wrong.

"Some people in Egypt have old-fashioned ideas based on the assumption that the Nile water belongs to Egypt," Ethiopia's Premier Meles Zenawi said. "But the circumstances have changed and changed forever."

Egypt agreed to take part in the Nile Basin initiative set up in Uganda's Entebbe on the shore of Lake Victoria in 1999. While Cairo saw it as a chance to share scientific data, the other states saw it as an opportunity to renegotiate the use of the Nile.

After a decade of talks with no sign of concessions from Egypt, five African countries - Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda - made their own agreement on more favourable terms than the 6 per cent of water allowed them.

"We've been grappling with this since the 80s, Egypt didn't want anyone to talk about the Nile," said a senior UN official close to the talks.

"Egypt has really pissed off other countries and this time unless there's a miracle they will have to give ground."

The Aswan is no longer the only mega-dam on the river. Ethiopia this month opened the 460MW Tana Beles dam and a string of new dams are planned to join the Beles on the Blue Nile. On the White Nile Uganda is opening the controversial Bujagali dam.

The new framework agreement has been rejected by Egypt and its ally Sudan - while Eritrea has signalled its support for Cairo. Burundi is expected to back the new deal as soon as elections are over and DR Congo is expected to ignore lobbying from Egypt and follow suit.

With support from seven of the 10 riparian, or riverside, states the deal could be ratified and backed by the African Union.

The Nile Basin is home to countries with rapidly expanding populations.

Egypt's population is expected to reach 121 million by 2050. Uganda's is expected to double long before then. The number of Ethiopians is projected to increase from 83 million to 183 million.

The bigger question is not whether a more equitable sharing of the Nile can avert a war, but whether the overexploited river can continue to meet the growing demands placed on it.

Down the Nile:

* It passes through nine nations: Egypt, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda, Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, Sudan

* It runs 6600km from Lake Victoria to the Mediterranean

* 85 per cent of the waters originate in Ethiopia

* 55.5 billion cu m of water goes to Egypt

- INDEPENDENT