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Ethiopia, the Sudan, and Egypt: The Nile River Dispute

Article  in  The Journal of Modern African Studies · December 1997

DOI: 10.1017/S0022278X97002577

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 The Journal of Modern African Studies, ,  (), pp. –
Printed in the United Kingdom #  Cambridge University Press

Ethiopia, the Sudan, and Egypt :

The Nile River Dispute
by A S H O K S W A I N*

T Nile flows for , kilometres through ten countries in north-
eastern Africa – Rwanda, Burundi, Zaı$ re}Congo, Tanzania, Kenya,
Uganda, Eritrea, Ethiopia, the Sudan, and Egypt – before reaching
the Mediterranean, and is the longest international river system in the
world – see Map . Its two main tributaries converge at Khartoum :
the White Nile, which originates from Burundi and flows through the
Equatorial Lakes, provides a small but steady flow that is fed by the
eternal snows of the Ruwenzori (the ‘ rain giver ’) mountains, while the
Blue Nile, which suffers from high seasonal fluctuations, descends from
the lofty Ethiopian ‘ water tower ’ highlands. They provide  per cent
of the waters of the Nile – Blue Nile  per cent, Baro-Akobo (Sobat)
 per cent, Tekesse (Atbara)  per cent – while the contribution from
the Equatorial Lakes region is only  per cent."
As many as  million people were thought to be living in the
Nilotic countries in , which are among the poorest in the world,
with an average of US$ gross national product (GNP) per capita in
. About half the total population was estimated to be dependent
on the Nile, whose average annual runoff is comparatively modest for
such a mighty and vitally important river. In addition, the flow from
the Ethiopian tributaries fluctuates greatly between the wet and dry
seasons, which means that the water reaching Egypt also varies
considerably : from  billion cubic metres in a good year like  to,
for instance, only  billion in , when poor rains were experienced.
Moreover, the average annual flow of the Nile has declined at Aswan
in Egypt : from , billion cubic metres during –, down to 
billion during – and to  billion during –.#

* Assistant Professor, Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University,

Sweden. The author wishes to thank the Swedish International Development Co-operation
Agency (Sida), as well as the Stockholm Environment Institute, for financial support.
" Ethiopian Technical Experts, ‘ Nile Basin Integrated Water Resource Management : a
strategy for cooperation ’, in Mahmoud A. Abu-Zeid and Asit K. Biswas (eds.), River Basin
Planning and Management (Calcutta, ), p. .
# M. N. Ezzat, M. A. Mohamadien, and B. B. Attia, ‘ Integrated Approach to Water
Resources Development ’, The Nile  Conference, Kampala, Uganda, February ,
Country Paper of the Arab Republic of Egypt.

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   
As is well known, the Nile enabled ancient civilisations to flourish in
its lower reaches in Egypt – also, for that matter, in its upper and
middle reaches at Meroe and Auxum – and for the inhabitants this was
a holy river, revered as the God Hapi.$ The famous Greek historian
Herodotus wrote in the fifth century .., ‘ Egypt is the gift of the Nile’,
and the dependence of the rapidly growing nation on the river has not
diminished. Since time immemorial Egyptians have made most use of
the waters of the Nile.

     

The prosperity brought by the Nile river system to vast arid deserts
attracted invaders. Following the fall in the eighteenth century of the
Ottoman Empire, which had been dominant in the region, Egypt
wanted to control the source(s) of the Nile, and might have done so if
Yohannes IV of Ethiopia had not successfully defended his territory at
Gundet in  and at Guta in %. After the European colonial
powers had penetrated the continent and created their zones of
influence, Britain’s control over Egypt lasted from the late nineteenth
century until , and over the Sudan from  until .& Italy
entered the Horn of Africa via Eritrea and Ethiopia, while France and
Belgium became colonial neighbours in Equatoria.
Several treaties were concluded between the colonial powers that
inter alia took cognisance of Egyptian concerns about the waters of the
Nile. Britain and Italy signed a protocol in April  for the
demarcation of their respective spheres of influence in Eastern Africa,
and this prevented the construction of any irrigation projects on the
Atbara, a tributary of the Nile originating in Ethiopia. In May ,
Ethiopia and Britain (on behalf of the Sudan and Egypt) agreed that
nothing should be built across the Blue Nile, Lake Tana, or Sobat, that
might impede the flow of the Nile. In May , Britain and the Congo
Free State decided to prohibit any construction that would diminish
the flow of the White Nile reaching the Sudan. The agreement between

$ Yahia Abdel Mageed, ‘ The Nile Basin : lessons from the past ’, in Asit K. Biswas (ed.),
International Waters of the Middle East : from Euphrates–Tigris to Nile (Bombay, ), p. .
% Haile Adhana, ‘ The Roots of Organised Internal Armed Conflicts in Ethiopia, – ’,
in Terje Trevdt (ed.), Conflict in the Horn of Africa : human and ecological consequences of warfare
(Uppsala, ), Research Programme on Environmental Policy and Society, Department of
Social and Economic Geography, pp. –.
& Stephen C. McCaffrey, ‘ Water, Politics, and International Law ’, in Peter H. Gleick (ed.),
Water in Crisis : a guide to the world ’s fresh water resources (New York, ), p. .

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     
France, Italy, and Britain in December , and that between Italy
and Britain in December , also protected the flow of the Nile from
any upstream diversions.' Due to the changing political influence of the
colonial powers in the region, as well as Britain’s ‘ dual-flag ’ policy of
creating the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium for the Sudan, the legal
character of these agreements became uncertain and complicated.
The Nile was flowing freely through the Sudan and onwards before
the construction of the first dam at Aswan in , which enabled some
excess water to be stored for irrigation in Egypt. The second, built in
, improved both the flood situation and the irrigation facilities
by increasing the capacity of Aswan to store water. Thereafter the
Egyptians started to worry about the probable exploitation of water
resources in the upstream areas,( and became suspicious of Britain’s
policy to increase the production of cotton in the Sudan.)
Although the Nile Waters Agreement reached in  consisted only
of an exchange of notes between the British High Commission in Cairo
and the Egyptian Government, it provided for the regulation of the
river until the Nile Waters Agreement of . According to Robert
Collins, the detailed  arrangements ‘ appeared to work solely for
the benefit of Egypt [whose] established and historic rights were
recognized ’.* Egypt was assured a minimum of  billion cubic metres
of water per year, as against  billion for the Sudan, and this left
approximately  billion unallocated. The agreement did not include
Ethiopia, and stipulated that ‘ no works were to be constructed on the
Nile or its tributaries or the equatorial lakes, so far as they were under
British jurisdiction, which would alter the flows entering Egypt
without her prior approval ’."!
Following the Egyptian revolution in , the local administration
in the Sudan started demanding that the  arrangements be
renegotiated, not least since they were enabling Egypt to enjoy
overwhelming rights in the utilisation of the Nile waters. After the

' C. O. Okidi, ‘ History of the Nile and Lake Victoria Basins through Treaties ’, in P. P. Howell
and J. A. Allan (eds.), The Nile : resources evaluation, resource management and hydropolicies and legal
issues (London, School of Oriental and African Studies and the Royal Geographical Society,
), pp. –.
( Sofus Christiansen, ‘ Shared Benefits, Shared Problems ’, in Sverre Lodgaard and Anders
Hjort af Orna$ s (eds.), The Environment and International Security (Oslo, ), PRIO Report No. ,
p. .
) According to Nadir A. L. Mohammed, ‘ Environmental Conflicts in Africa ’, Nato Advanced
Research Workshop on ‘ Conflict and the Environment ’, at Bolkesjø, Norway, – June ,
Britain was using the Nile as both a carrot and a stick vis-a[ -vis Egyptian nationalism.
* Robert O. Collins, The Waters of the Nile : hydropolitics and the Jonglei Canal, ‰€€–‰ˆˆ (Oxford,
), p. . "! Ibid. p. .

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   

M 
The Nile River and Surrounding Environs

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     
Anglo-Egyptian Agreement of  had given the Sudanese the chance
to decide about their own future, they overwhelmingly rejected unity
with Egypt and chose independence. In  the Republic of the
Sudan was inaugurated, and the first Prime Minister, Ismail al-Azhari,
immediately reiterated that the  Agreement should be revised just
when Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt was contemplating the creation of
a massive new dam at Aswan. The years – witnessed a serious
dispute between the two countries over their share of the Nile waters,
and Egypt withdrew from a previous undertaking to help the Sudanese
to build a reservoir at Roseires on the Blue Nile, because of their
continuing objections to the construction of what became known as the
Aswan High Dam. Relations deteriorated further when the Sudan
declared unilaterally its non-adherence to the  agreement, and
during this period of tension, Egyptian army units were moved to the
border as a show of force.""
After the military take-over in Khartoum in , the re! gime headed
by General Ibrahim Abboud began to soften its stance towards Cairo.
Hence the  Agreement between the Republic of the Sudan and the
United Arab Republic ‘ for the full utilization of the Nile waters ’."#
Given the newly calculated yearly discharge of  billion cubic metres
of water at Aswan, Egypt and the Sudan obtained the right to use,
respectively, ± billion and ± billion cubic metres, with the
remaining  billion earmarked to cover losses from annual evaporation
and seepage. Lake Nasser extended  kilometres into Sudanese
territory, and the Government was paid  million Egyptian pounds in
sterling as compensation for having to resettle as many as , who
had been displaced."$ The Sudan was permitted to construct not only
the long awaited reservoir at Roseires but whatever else was necessary
to utilise to the full its share of the Nile waters. Both countries agreed
to tackle the water resources lost in the Sudanese swamps on a cost-
sharing basis, and committed themselves not to negotiate unilaterally
with any third party over the Nile waters. In  Egypt and the
Sudan signed a protocol to establish a Permanent Joint Technical
Committee to facilitate co-operation on agreed projects."%

"" Gabriel R. Warburg, ‘ The Nile in Egyptian–Sudanese Relations’, in Orient (Leverkusen,

Germany), , , December , p. .
"# See appendix in Collins, op. cit. pp. –. "$ Christiansen, loc. cit. p. .
"% C. O. Okidi, ‘ Legal and Policy Considerations for Regional Cooperation on Lake Victoria
and Nile River ’, The Nile  Conference, Kampala, Uganda, February .

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   

   

The plan to build a high dam at Aswan had been envisaged by the
Greek-Egyptian engineer Adrian Daninos in , and this offered
Nasser an opportunity to strengthen his domestic support after
replacing Muhammad Naguib in , and to bring legitimacy to his
re! gime. Meanwhile the Western powers were apprehensive about
Nasser’s strategy of ‘ non-alignment ’, and persuaded the World Bank to
withdraw from its commitment to help Egypt funds this very expensive
project. In retaliation, Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal and
approached the Soviet Union for the financial and technical assistance
that Nikita Khrushchev was more than willing to provide in order to
find an ally in the region. Work started in , and the dam that came
into operation in  created one of the largest man-made lakes in the
world.
Without Lake Nasser, Egypt would undoubtedly have been in dire
economic straits. Indeed, more than  million people are directly
dependent on the reservoir’s capacity to carry  billion cubic metres
of water, and its construction has brought significant increases in the
welfare of the country due to the reliable supply of adequate water for
irrigation, as well as municipal and industrial use."& But although the
High Aswan Dam has also helped to prevent flooding and to improve
the drought situation in the region, it has a number of adverse
environmental effects on its location and downstream, notably water
logging, salinisation, and river bed erosion. Mainly due to Lake Nasser,
only about  per cent of the Nile’s flow reaches the sea."'
The involvement of the Soviets in the construction of the High
Aswan Dam was not welcomed in the West, and led to cold-war
recriminations about the hydro-politics of the region."( Ethiopia had
criticised the  agreement by stressing its legitimate rights to water
originating from the highlands, and began to identify power and
irrigation projects there with the help of the US Bureau of Reclamation.
After this study had been completed in , Ethiopia asked for six
billion cubic metres of water to irrigate land in the catchment areas of
the Blue Nile.") Meanwhile, the East African countries in the catchment

"& S. E. Smith, ‘ General Impact of Aswan High Dam ’, in Journal of Water Resources Planning and
Management (New York), , , October , pp. –.
"' Sandra Postel, ‘ Dividing the Waters : food security, ecosystem health, and the new politics
of scarcity ’ in World Watch (Washington, DC), , September , p. .
"( Asit K. Biswas, ‘ Sustainable Water Development from the Perspective of the South : issues
and constraints ’, in Abu-Zeid and Biswas (eds.), op. cit. pp. –.
") Ethiopian Technical Experts, in ibid. p. .

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     
areas of the White Nile, who were pressing the British for their
independence, protested against their exclusion from the decisions that
had been reached in  between Egypt and the Sudan."*
In , following a bloodless coup d ’eU tat in Khartoum, Jaafar
Muhammad Nimeiri came to power, and the three socialist republics
in the region – Egypt, the Sudan, and Libya – signed the ‘ Tripoli
Charter ’ for greater political, military, and economic co-operation.#!
Following the death of Nasser in , Anwar Sadat of Egypt
intervened militarily to rescue Nimeiri’s re! gime – in July  and
again in July  – with both leaders signing ‘ charters of integration ’
in , , and , which kept the concept of a united Nile valley
on the agenda. Sadat saw the Sudan as an important ally for Egypt,
which appeared to be dangerously encircled by pro-Soviet re! gimes in
Libya, Chad, Somalia, and Ethiopia. In return, the Sudan stood by
Egypt after the American-sponsored Camp David conferences during
– and the Arab summit in Baghdad in March .

   

In return for helping Nimeiri to remain in power, Egypt obtained a
number of concessions from the Sudan, notably permission to construct
the Jonglei Canal in . The first phase of the project was designed
to divert part of the flow from the Bor to the mouth of the Sobat,
another tributary of the White Nile, in order to decrease the loss of
water that occurs, especially from evaporation, when the river passes
through the Sudd swamps in southern Sudan.#" The proposed second
phase, which included dams at Lakes Victoria and Albert, and
drainage schemes for the Machar Marshes and Bahr el-Ghazal, as well
as another, and longer Jonglei Canal, could be described as Egypt’s
master water plan. It was expected to supplement the annual flow by
. billion cubic metres of water, of which Lake Nasser’s share was to
reach . billion.
The need for enhancing the supply to Aswan arose due to the
noticeable decrease in the quantity of water flowing into Lake Nasser,
which had been reduced since  as a result of population growth
and continuing drought in the upstream areas. In accordance with the
provisions of the  agreement, Egypt wanted to develop the White

"* Yahia Abdel Mageed, loc. cit. p. .

#! Gabriel R. Warburg, Egypt and the Sudan : studies in history and politics (London, ), pp.
–.
#" See Collins, op. cit.

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   
Nile waters in the Sudan and held a claim on the anticipated increased
flow.## However, the planning and implementation of the Jonglei I
project, like the Aswan High Dam, received wide public scrutiny, and
the water diversion issue became highly politicised within and outside
the basin. The seasonally flooded areas of the Bor are a vital component
of the Sudd, since the river-fed grasslands provide the grazing grounds
for the animals in the area,#$ and it was claimed that the changes would
have a damaging impact on the lives of some , pastoralists. It was
also feared that the Jonglei Canal was bound to create communication
problems in the region as well as adversely affecting the rainfall and
climate by reducing the evaporation to the atmosphere.#% It was widely
believed that the project would bring benefits to the people of northern
Sudan and Egypt at the expense of those who lived in the south.
A French company began to construct the Jonglei Canal in , but
after  of the planned  kilometres had been completed, a series of
attacks by the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) caused the
work to be forcibly suspended in .#& Thus ended the first serious
efforts to increase the yield of the Nile, and the incomplete canal
became a dangerous ditch for the human beings and wildlife of that
region.#' As Robert Collins explained in  :
Today the Nile waters cannot support the burgeoning population of an Egypt
of some  million people expected to increase to  millions by the end of the
twentieth century. Yet the water to make the desert bloom lies in the
equatorial lakes, trapped by the Sudd, whereby the wealth of water in the
lakes is dissipated. The partial solution is Jonglei, the canal to pass the waters
of the Lake Plateau down to Egypt, without which the construction of any
regulators at the lakes is useless even if the many riparian powers agreed. By
itself the Jonglei Canal will not resolve Egypt’s long-term water requirements,
but at the present it remains the only viable hydrological project to provide
additional water to the millions of people living north of the enervating
swamps of the Nile.#(
Not deterred by internal Sudanese opposition, Nimeiri maintained

## Ariel Dinar and Aaron Wolf, ‘ International Markets for Water and the Potential for
Regional Cooperation : economic and political perspectives in the Western Middle East ’, in
Economic Development and Cultural Change (Chicago), , , October , p. .
#$ Paul Howell, Michael Lock, and Stephen Cobb, The Jonglei Canal : impact and opportunity.
(Cambridge, ).
#% J. V. Sutcliffe and Y. P. Parks, ‘ Environmental Aspects of the Jonglei Canal ’, in Abu-Zeid
and Biswas (eds.), op. cit. p. .
#& Mohamed Suliman, Civil War in Sudan : the impact of ecological degradation (Zurich and Bern,
), Environment and Conflict Project, Occasional Paper No. , p. .
#' Robert O. Collins, ‘ The Jonglei Canal : the past and the present of a future ’, th Trevelyan
Lecture, University of Durham, .
#( Collins, The Waters of the Nile, p. .

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     
a close rapport with Sadat, and following the Egyptian President’s
assassination in , with Hosni Mubarak, who pursued the policy of
his predecessor in maintaining cordial relations with the Sudan in
general, and with Nimeiri in particular. The aforementioned charter
that they signed in , as a follow-up to earlier agreements,
emphasised the future integration of policy and programmes of the two
countries. In spite of Nimeiri’s late conversion to the Islamic path in
, he was offered asylum by Egypt after being removed from office
two years later.
Those in power in Khartoum since  have not been able to reach
a peaceful compromise with the leaders of the armed rebels in southern
Sudan, which means that there is no immediate hope that the Jonglei
Canal can begin to operate and augment the Nile’s flow. The Sudan’s
relationship with Egypt reached an all-time low after , following
the installation in Khartoum of a military Islamic fundamentalist
dictatorship,#) which unilaterally abolished its integration agreement
with Egypt, while at the same time assisting anti-Egyptian forces in its
territory. The Sudan supported Saddam Hussain of Iraq in , and
its association with the Islamic fundamentalist re! gime in Iran has been
the source of headaches for the West, and especially President Mubarak
in Cairo.
Egypt’s friendly relations with Israel since the Camp David
negotiations during – undoubtedly complicated the situation
among the Nile riparian countries. In , President Sadat had
reportedly offered the Israeli Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, 
million cubic metres of Nile water per year ‘ in exchange for the solution
to the Palestinian problem and the liberation of Jerusalem ’.#* Needless-
to-say, this scheme never became a reality, not least because of
opposition by Egyptian nationalists. In addition, as was only to be
expected, Ethiopia immediately objected to this proposed transfer of
water to Israel, as did – and still does – the Sudan. According to its
country paper presented to the Nile  Conference in  at
Kampala, ‘ The use of the waters of the Nile and other shared water
resources should be exclusive right of the co-riparian countries alone
and no transfer should be permitted to any non-riparian country.’$!

#) Warburg, loc. cit. , p. .

#* Raj Krishna, ‘ The Legal Regime of the Nile River Basin ’, in Joyce Starr and Daniel C. Stoll
(eds.), The Politics of Scarcity : water in the Middle East (Boulder, CO, ), pp. –.
$! The Republic of Sudan, ‘ Country Paper ’, The Nile  Conference, Kampala, Uganda,
February .

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   

        

Egypt is very heavily dependent on the Nile since this provides more
than  per cent of the total amount of water that is being used each
year$" – with groundwater, agricultural drainage water, and treated
municipal water amounting to less than  per cent.$# Although there
are few reliable data on Egypt’s available water resources, since the
outcome of a comprehensive study supported by the World Bank has
been kept secret, it is clear from independent research that dire
prospects of intense water scarcity are going to haunt most of the
inhabitants in the years to come.
John Waterbury predicted as long ago as  that Egypt could
experience an annual water deficit of about  billion cubic metres by
the beginning of the next century.$$ With the population rising by one
million every nine months, more water is obviously needed for basic
human needs and for growing crops,$% and requirements have further
increased due to greater irrigation works resulting from land
reclamation projects.$& Adding to the country’s misery, the evaporation
from the surface of the  kilometre-long Lake Nasser apparently
exceeds earlier calculations. Given that nearly  per cent of Egypt’s
food continues to be imported,$' farmers obviously need more and
more water from the Nile if they are to achieve a reasonable level of
‘ food security ’.
The Sudan is the largest country in the African continent, and its
population of circa  million was estimated in  to be growing at
an annual rate of ± per cent. Large areas in the north hardly receive
any rainfall, and hence depend almost completely on irrigation. After
the  agreement, a number of dams were built to store more water,
notably at Roseires and Sennar on the Blue Nile, and at Kashm el
Girba on the Atbara. Even so, the Sudan is presently considering the

$" Mahmoud A. Abu-Seid, ‘ The River Nile and Its Contribution to the Mediterranean
Environment ’, Stockholm Water Symposium, Sweden, – August .
$# Sandra Postel, Last Oasis : facing water scarcity (New York, ), p. .
$$ John Waterbury, Hydropolitics of the Nile Valley (Syracuse, NY, ), and ‘ Riverains and
Lacustrines : toward international cooperation in the Nile Basin ’, Research Program in
Development Studies, Princeton University, Discussion Paper No. , September .
$% Sandra Postel, ‘ Where Have All the Rivers Gone ? ’, in World Watch, , , May–June ,
p. .
$& Egypt has recently embarked on its ‘ New Valley Project ’, whereby ± billion cubic metres
of water will be pumped annually from Lake Nasser and transported hundreds of miles away to
its Western Desert. Wall Street Journal (New York),  August .
$' N. Sehmi, ‘ The Enigmatic Nile ’, in World Meteorological Organization Bulletin (Geneva), ,
, July , p. .

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     
construction of other reservoirs because of the urgent need to create
more irrigated fields as one way of responding to the growing demands
of the inhabitants for more food to be produced locally.
To make matters worse, certain areas have experienced increased
desertification and land degradation.$( There was speculation some
years ago about a Sudanese plan to introduce a new irrigation system,
which might have raised demand by as much as  billion cubic metres
yearly,$) but the Government has now openly revealed its water
requirements ; namely, an estimated  billion cubic metres by the year
 for food security and other essential uses. Plans are being made for
an upper Atbara reservoir, and work has started on heightening the
dam at Roseires and constructing others are Merowe.$*
As noted already, Egypt’s relations with the Sudan deteriorated
considerably after Nimeiri’s ouster in , with Cairo strongly
opposing growing demands for the  agreement to be revised in
order to increase the Sudan’s share of Nile waters. Khartoum’s alleged
involvement in the unsuccessful attempt on the life of President
Mubarak while in Addis Ababa in June  brought further
deterioration to the bilateral relationship. After Hassan al-Turabi, the
leader of the National Islamic Front (NIF) of the Sudan, had
threatened to stop Egypt’s supply of water by redirecting the Nile’s
flow, Mubarak made no efforts to conceal his aggressive response in an
interview given to a Cairo newspaper, Al-Akber : ‘ Those who play with
fire in Khartoum … will push us to confrontation and to defend our
rights and lives.’%! After the Sudanese threat had been discussed in the
Egyptian Cabinet, the Foreign Minister declared, ‘ I am warning
Turabi not to play with fire, at the same time, not to play with water.’%"
The reality is that Cairo has never hesitated to use the threat of war
to prevent upstream countries from taking any actions that might
adversely affect the lives of all Egyptians. Indeed, the Nile has been at
the heart of the regional foreign policy that has been pursued by Egypt,
which continues to proclaim its historic right (going back  years)
to utilise the water that it needs from the river. However, the question
that is increasingly being posed is whether Egypt can go on using such
large quantities of water for agriculture when the needs of other

$( Stephen Lonergan, ‘ Climate Warning, Water Resources and Geopolitical Conflict : a study
of nations dependent on the Nile, Litani and Jordan river system ’, Ottawa, Operational Research
and Analysis Establishment, Extra-Mural Paper No. , March .
$) Peter Beaumont, Environmental Management and Development in Drylands (London, ).
$* The Republic of Sudan, ‘ Country Paper ’, February .
%! ‘ Water as a Weapon ’, in Sudan Update, , ,  July .
%" Galal Nassar, ‘ War of Words and Water ’, in Al-Ahram Weekly (Cairo),  July .

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   
countries upstream are growing. Indeed, Ethiopia is planning to
harness the waters of the Blue Nile, Sobat, and Atbara, while Kenya
and Uganda wish to develop the water resources of Lake Victoria.
While Egypt is seriously averse to the idea of any water being
diverted upstream for agricultural purposes, it has actively encouraged
the exploitation of the Nile’s hydropower potential. The dams which
were built in the Sudan after the  agreement have been
advantageous for Egypt in so far as they have acted as ‘ siltation basins ’
that have stopped a considerable quantity of sediments from reaching
Lake Nasser. Unfortunately, the capacity of the reservoir at Kashm el
Girba has already been reduced by  per cent sedimentation, while
the corresponding figure at Roseires is almost  per cent. Though the
blockage of sediments in the Sudan has increased river bed erosion in
Egypt, it has reduced the threat to the high dam at Aswan.
Egypt continues to show interest in the creation of more hydropower
upstream, particularly in the Sudan,%# since this would not decrease the
flow of the Nile, and is also proposing that the huge groundwater
potential in southern Sudan should be exploited. Egypt is certainly
keen to see the completion of the Jonglei Canal, although the on}off
civil war in the south does not suggest that the project can become
operational in the near future. Moreover, unresolved mutual suspicions
between Khartoum and Cairo are likely to reduce the possibility of
other joint efforts being designed to develop the water resources of the
two neighbours.

       :    ‘            ’
A third country is also naturally extremely concerned about any
plans to change the flow of the Nile. Often referred to as the ‘ great
unknown ’ of the region, Ethiopia is not bound by an agreement with
either Egypt and}or the Sudan over sharing the waters of their great
river, although Khartoum continues to refer to the provisions in the
 treaty between the Emperor of Ethiopia and the British
Government on behalf of the Sudan with respect to the Blue Nile, the
Sobat, and Lake Tana.%$
There is little doubt that Haile Selassie’s fall in  was hastened,
if not precipitated, by the impact of the terrible Welo famine of –
which confirmed that the Imperial re! gime had neither the political will

%# Arab Republic of Egypt, ‘ Country Paper ’, The Nile  Conference, Kampala, Uganda,
February . %$ The Republic of Sudan, op. cit. .

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     
nor the financial strength to develop the water resources of the country.
After the Emperor’s removal and presumed execution, the military
Dergue, headed by Mengistu Haile Mariam, proclaimed Ethiopia to be
a Marxist–Leninist state. A number of feasibility studies were
undertaken in the Lake Tana area, under the guidance of Soviet
advisors, and Ethiopians stressed at the  UN Water Conference at
Mar del Plata in Argentina that it was ‘ the sovereign right of any
riparian state, in the absence of an international agreement, to proceed
unilaterally with the development of water resources within its
territory ’.%%
Tensions increased between Egypt and Ethiopia, particularly after
the Israel–Egypt peace treaty had been signed in Washington in
March ,%& even though Sadat decided not to proceed with his
‘ water for peace ’ project with Israel. But the Dergue even objected to
proposed transfer of water to the so-called ‘ new lands ’ in the western
corner of the Nile Delta, where Egypt had been hoping since  to
reclaim ± million hectares. As a start, northern Sinai would receive
 billion cubic metres of Nile water per year, via the al-Salam pipeline
under the Suez Canal, in order to irrigate , hectares of ‘ new
lands ’. In , Mengistu threatened to reduce Blue Nile flows in
retaliation,%' whereupon President Sadat responded by warning that
‘ If Ethiopia takes any action to block our right to the Nile water, there
will be no alternative for us but to use force ’.%(
Moves by the Dergue in  to resettle ± million Ethiopians along
the tributaries of the Nile failed due to the inadequate planning, as well
as lack of economic and organisational capacities.%) Moreover, the
internal civil war and separatist movements in Eritrea and Tigray
prevented the Ethiopian re! gime from embarking on any large-scale
development of water resources in the highlands. Prior to Mengistu’s
fall in  which, like the demise of Haile Selassie, had been
accelerated by the effects of a severe famine, the Ethiopian President
had felt sufficiently desperate to solicit the help of Israel, earlier
condemned as a reactionary Zionist state, in order to gain support from

%% Lloyd Timberlake and Jon Tinker, Environment and Conflict : links between ecological decay,
environmental bankruptcy and political and military instability (London, November ), Earthscan
Briefing Document No. , p. .
%& Scot E. Smith and Hussam M. Al-Rawahy, ‘ The Blue Nile : potential for conflict and
alternatives for meeting future demands ’, in Water International (Lausanne), , , , pp.
–.
%' Natasha Beschorner, ‘ Water and Instability in the Middle East ’, in Adelphi Papers (London),
, Winter –, pp. –. %( Krishna, loc. cit. , pp. –.
%) Alula Pankhurst, Resettlement and Famine in Ethiopia : the villagers’ experience (Manchester,
).

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   
the United States,%* and some Israeli engineers were invited to help
Ethiopia in developing its water potential.&! Almost concurrently,
Egypt was instrumental in blocking an African Development Bank
loan to Mengistu’s re! gime for a sizeable water development project in
 which could have reduced the flow of the Nile.&"
Although widespread deforestation and soil degradation have
affected production, over  per cent of Ethiopia’s population still live
in the highlands, which constitute just over  per cent of the land area
of the country, while hosting  per cent of the livestock and accounting
for  per cent of rain-fed agricultural land.&# The present leaders of
Ethiopia are serious about achieving self-sufficiency in food production,
and certainly do not want the famines of the s and s to
reoccur. But by the beginning of the s, only , hectares of
irrigated land were reportedly being cultivated, estimated to be less
than  per cent of what might be feasible in future.&$ The position of the
transitional re! gime led by the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary
Democratic Front (EPRDF) was made clear in the paper prepared by
the country’s technical experts for the first Nile  Conference held
at Aswan in  :
The agriculture of Ethiopia has been at the mercy of rainfall despite the
commonly-held belief that ‘ Ethiopia is the water tower of Africa ’. Testimony
to this are the series of recurrent droughts, famines and massive deaths.
Equally, present realities have brought home the unavoidable hard fact that
Ethiopia cannot afford to remain a chronically drought-stricken country with
an agrarian system of a traditional type fettered in a paradox of population
growth and rising expectation and demands of its peoples. It then follows that
whatever expansion and intensification is carried out under rainfed
agriculture, food self-sufficiency cannot be achieved unless augmented by
irrigation. Hence, there is the felt need to develop its irrigated agricultural
potential.&%
Moreover, since the inauguration of the Federal Democratic Republic
of Ethiopia in May , the regional states have also been putting
pressure on the newly elected EPRDF Government to develop the
nation’s water resources.&&

%* Kinfe Abraham, Ethiopia. From Bullets to the Ballot Box : the bumpy road to democracy and the
political economy of transition (Lawrenceville, NJ, ), p. .
&! Fred Pearce, ‘ Africa at a Watershed ’, in New Scientist (London), , March , pp. –.
&" Alan Cowell, ‘ Now, a Little Steam. Later, Maybe a Water War ’, in the New York Times, 
February . &# Abraham, op. cit. pp. –.
&$ Adrian Wood and Michael Sta/ hl, Ethiopia : national conservation strategy, phase one report
(Cambridge and Gland, Switzerland, International Union for the Conservation of Nature and
Natural Resources, ). &% Ethiopian Technical Experts, loc. cit. pp. –.
&& Interview with Shiferaw Jarso Tedecha, Minister of Water Resources, Addis Ababa, 
October .

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     
The Vice-Minister of Water Resources, while asserting that food
sufficiency was his Government’s main goal, explained in  that
Ethiopia had no other choice but to increase agricultural production
by seeking and obtaining a fair share of the waters of the Nile.&' But
bearing in mind the apprehension raised by an earlier unilateral plan
to divert  billion cubic metres of water from the Blue Nile for
Ethiopia’s own irrigation projects,&( the present Government is unlikely
to promote any ‘ surprise ’ schemes. Indeed, the Ethiopian Parliament
only approved the construction of two small hydropower dams on the
Blue Nile in June . However, according to the Minister of Water
Resources, the Government will undertake the construction of required
projects, with or without foreign assistance, once its master plan for the
highlands has been completed by early .&) While refusing to
divulge the total amount of water that his country needs from the Nile
system, Shiferaw Jarso Tedecha thinks that it will be less than the share
of the Sudan or Egypt.&* The resolve of the EPRDF Government in
developing Ethiopia’s water resources is evident from the fact that a
detailed plan for the Baro-Akobo river (known as Sobat in the Sudan,
a tributary of the White Nile) was finished in October .'!
Given that Ethiopia is projected to have more people to feed by 
than Egypt,'" the Government is obviously going to maintain the
nation’s sovereign right to develop all resources within its borders.
Although financial constraints and technological difficulties have
stalled the implementation of major capital projects for a long time, the
Government expects to expand its agricultural and irrigation capacities
during what is expected to be an ongoing era of relative political and
economic stability.'# Ethiopia’s new image has increased the confidence
of policy-makers that their supply of water from the Nile can be
significantly enhanced without a troublesome regional crisis. Ethiopia
is internally peaceful and no more a Soviet client state, which helps to
explain why financial assistance from the West has increased
considerably in recent years. In short, there is a growing confidence in
Addis Ababa that Egyptian and Sudanese objections to its water

&' Interview with Abdirashid Dulane Rafle, Vice-Minister of Water Resources, Addis Ababa,
 October .
&( Robin Clarke, Water : the international crisis (London, ), p. .
&) Ethiopia is reportedly being assisted to identify sites for the most promising water projects
by American, Dutch, French, and Italian engineering firms. Wall Street Journal,  August .
&* Shiferaw Jarso Tedecha,  October .
'! Author’s discussions with senior officials in Addis Ababa, October .
'" United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report, ‰‰„ (Oxford, ).
'# ‘ Stirring up Red Sea and Nile Controversy ’, in Sudan Focus (London), , ,  October ,
p. .

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   
development projects can be successfully countered at the diplomatic
level. According to Kinfe Abraham, ‘ that may be the reason why
Ethiopia is bringing up these proposals so vigorously now ’.'$

                        -       
Bearing in mind the existence of only a few fragile bilateral
agreements, particularly between Egypt and the Sudan, some attempts
have been made to achieve wider co-operation on the Nile river system,
notably by the Equatorial Lakes basin countries. As early as ,
Egypt, Kenya, the Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda, together with the
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the World
Meteorological Organisation (WMO), decided to evaluate the levels of
water in the Lake Victoria catchment areas in order to assist in their
control and regulation, as well as the ensuing flows down the Nile.'%
Later, Rwanda and Burundi joined this hydro-meteorological project,
but not the major contributor of the waters being surveyed, Ethiopia.
For many years the director of Hydromet was a Sudanese and his
deputy an Egyptian, and given the limited scope of its functions, the
project was able to continue until .
Following a UNDP initiative, the water resource ministers from
Egypt, the Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, and Congo}Zaı$ re participated
in a meeting held in  in Bangkok. Ethiopia was represented by its
ambassador to France, and those present decided on behalf of their
governments to promote and establish effective co-operation among
the Nile riparian countries at the earliest possible opportunity.'& But
although the UNDP provided financial assistance to support a fact-
finding mission, and also organised a second meeting of the ministers
in Addis Ababa in January , efforts to achieve basin-based
co-operation on an equal basis were unsuccessful.
After the Hydromet project had been completed, the water resources
ministers from the aforementioned five countries, plus Rwanda, agreed
when they met in Kampala in December  to create the Technical
Committee for the Promotion of the Development and Environmental
Protection of the Nile Basin (Tecconile). This came into operation in
January  with its secretariat at Entebbe, initially for a period of
three years, later extended until December . The meetings of
Tecconile held in Entebbe in July , in Cairo in January , in

'$ Interview with Dr Kinfe Abraham, President of the Ethiopian International Institute for
Peace and Development, Addis Ababa,  October . '% Okidi, loc. cit. .
'& Yahia Abdel Mageed, loc. cit. , p. .

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     
Entebbe in June , in Cairo in November , and in Arusha in
February  resulted in agreement being reached on the Nile River
Basin Action Plan in May .''
Concurrently, yearly conferences known as the Nile  series have
brought together technical experts from each Nile basin country in
order to exchange views and foster co-operation. They met in Aswan
in , in Khartoum in , in Arusha in , in Kampala in ,
and in Addis Ababa in February . Ethiopia participates in these
‘ talking shop ’ conferences only as an observer – along with Eritrea,
Burundi, and Kenya – and does not consider that all the governments
in the region should have an equally important ‘ say ’ in the decisions
that have to be taken about the Nile. Apart from the fact that the
riparian countries of the White Nile do not contribute nearly as much
water as flows into the Blue Nile from Ethiopia (especially) and the
Sudan, they do not have such great water scarcity problems because of
their equatorial location. Moreover, due to Egyptian domination in
Tecconile, Ethiopia prefers to retain its status in that technical
committee as an observer only, without having the commitment of
being a full-fledged member.'(

 
The sharing of scarce waters is always likely to be difficult for the
riparian countries concerned, especially in the Nile basin, where over
 per cent of the population are engaged in agricultural production,')
and where the catchment areas suffer from periodic droughts. For
example, during – the water being stored at Lake Nasser was
only  billion cubic metres, i.e. less than one-fifth of the reservoir’s
capacity. Although the situation has improved due to good rainfall
since , the Nile’s runoff patterns have reportedly exhibited low-
flow periods at the beginning of each century.'*
Given Egypt’s almost total dependence on the Nile’s water, any and
all developments likely to affect the river are matters of high foreign
policy concern. However, in recent years, its political domination in the
basin region has been increasingly challenged by the Sudan,
particularly since the advent in  of the National Islamic Front.

'' Tecconile, Nile River Basin Action Plan (Entebbe,  May ).
'( Shiferaw Jarso Tedecha, October .
') Yahia Abdel Mageed, loc. cit. p. .
'* Sandra Postel, ‘ Emerging Water Scarcities ’, in Lester R. Brown (ed.), The Worldwatch
Reader : on global environmental issues (New York, ), p. .

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   
This has regularly been accused of harbouring radical Islamic
opposition groups that aim to overthrow the Egyptian Government,
while Khartoum claims that Cairo is supporting the rebels in southern
Sudan. To make matters worse, the two countries have a continuing
territorial dispute over the Halaib region that borders on the Red Sea.
However, the Sudan does not pose any immediate danger to Egypt’s
water supply as it hardly possesses the means to do so. Its economy
appears to be insufficiently strong to carry out any effective projects on
the Nile, and its virtual international isolation provides little or no hope
of foreign assistance. According to Egypt’s Minister of Public Works
and Water Resources in  :
The Sudan does not have the means nor the ability to carry out its threats.
Even if they could block the river, this would cause large parts of the Sudan
to become submerged under water. Therefore, if the Sudan did block the Nile,
they would feel the consequences long before Egypt.(!

But this is not the case with Ethiopia, because despite the willingness
of its leaders to align themselves from time to time with the re! gimes in
Cairo and}or Khartoum, they do not want a perceived ‘ Arab ’ nation
to dominate the affairs of the ‘ Black ’ Horn of Africa. Indeed, although
Ethiopia signed an agreement to co-operate over the use of Nile waters
with the Sudan in December ,(" and similarly with Egypt in June
,(# there have been increasing tensions and mutual suspicions
between these governments.
With political stability and a favourable international image,
Ethiopia now possesses the strength to mobilise resources to develop the
Blue Nile and other tributaries, and its topography offers suitable sites
for needed dams and reservoirs. The new found confidence in Addis
Ababa can be gauged from the fact that EPRDF Government refused
a request by the World Bank in  to co-operate with the Sudan and
Egypt over even a small irrigation project in its highlands.($ Although
the situation in the region has been further complicated by the fact that
newly independent Eritrea controls some of the relatively small up-
stream tributaries of the Nile, the political leaders in Asmara enjoy a
friendly relationship with those in Addis Ababa, and they plan to de-
velop the territory’s water resources for a major sugar-cane plan-
tation.(% With Eritreans on their side and given Khartoum’s hostility

(! Al-Ahram Weekly,  July . (" Beschorner, loc. cit. –, p. .
(# ‘ Agreement on the Nile River ’, in International Rivers and Lakes (New York), UN Newsletter,
, May , p. . ($ Shiferaw Jarso Tedecha, October .
(% Interview with senior officials of the Ministry of Agriculture, Asmara,  October .

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     
to Cairo, Ethiopians are unlikely to be too worried about any threats
from Egypt.
As long as the demand for water continues to grow in the region –
and there is no end in sight to this process – it is not difficult to foresee
that disagreements might escalate into violence over sharing the
resources of the Nile in the near future,(& not least since present
attitudes do not provide much prospects of joint co-operative efforts.('
Egypt is regularly reminding neighbouring countries of its ability and
determination to protect its socio-economic and geopolitical interests in
the Nile basin, and although such warnings may have an effective
impact on the Sudanese re! gime, at least for the time being, they are not
likely to deter Ethiopia which poses the real threat to the downstream
flow of water.
At present, any plans made by one of the riparian states concerning
the use of the Nile are being perceived by another as endangering its
national interests.(( Hence the urgent need for a basin-wide ar-
rangement, or at least between the major riparian countries. The
construction of a series of dams in the Ethiopian highlands would
provide not only more irrigation for farmers in those areas, but also
boost the upstream water storage, and reduce the almost annual Nile
floods, which would benefit both the Sudan and Egypt, since decreasing
the evaporation would increase the total volume of available water.()
Without the co-operation of these three governments, however, the full
potential of the entire river system cannot be fully realised, and
negotiations should proceed by illustrating the benefits associated with
basin-based developments.
Meanwhile, all the riparian countries should try to minimise the
amount of Nile water that they need – particularly in the agricultural
sector, which consumes so much of what is available – by importing
more ‘ virtual water ’, the term recently coined by Tony Allan to cover
what is produced in countries with abundant water.(* For example, the
fact that less than  per cent of Egypt’s land accounts for over  per
cent of its total water supply suggests that even a small shift in the
priorities of usage could help tremendously to save scarce water.

(& Lonergan, op. cit. p. , .

(' Beschorner, loc. cit. –, p. .
(( Jan Hultin, ‘ The Nile : source of life, source of conflict ’, in Leif Ohlsson (ed.), Hydropolitics :
conflicts over water as a development constraint (London, ), p. .
() D. Whittington and E. McClelland, ‘ Opportunities for Regional and International
Cooperation in the Nile Basin ’, in Water International, , , pp. –.
(* Tony Allan, ‘ Water in the Region : developing a shared resource ’, in Bulletin of Regional
Cooperation in the Middle East (Washington, DC), , , Winter –, pp. –.

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   
Certainly Egypt needs to find other sources rather than being totally
dependent on an international river system. Taking the cue from other
Arab countries, Egypt might construct facilities for the desalination of
sea water. Of course, it would be an expensive option, but as explained
by Egypt’s Minister of Water Resources, ‘ both in financial and in
human terms, this is nothing compared to the cost of a war ’.)!

)! Al-Ahram Weekly,  July .

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