Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene November 2018 Vol.13 No.5 | Page 21

Transboundary Waters
“The problem for Egypt is that, from a geographical
point of view, it does not hold the knife on the side of the
handle,” warns Colombo.
“For this reason, Egypt cannot fail to reach an agreement
with neighbouring countries. What Cairo could do is to
create a sort of ‘regional forum’, a ‘platform’, where the
various disputes with neighbouring countries are discussed
and perhaps include other topics in the talks,” Colombo
added. “If other themes were included, Egypt could have
some more voices than Sudan and Ethiopia, while if the
discussion remains relegated to the theme of water, the
margin of action for Egypt would be limited.”
The Nile Basin Initiative (NBI), created in 1999 with the
aim to “take care of and jointly use the shared Nile Basin
water and related resources”, could be an example of
regional multilateralism to resolve disputes but it remains
relegated to discussions about water management.
Institutionally, the NBI is not a commission. It is “in
transition”, awaiting an agreement on Nile water usage, so
it has no legal standing beyond its headquarters agreement
with Uganda, where the secretariat is settled.
Due to differences that have not yet been resolved, the
NBI has focused on technical, relatively apolitical projects.
This ends up weakening the organisation since Egypt sees
technical and political tracks as inseparable. Therefore,
Cairo suspended its participation in most NBI activities,
effectively depleting the organisation’s political weight.
Populations living on the Nile and the impact
If regional agreements on the management of the
Nile’s waters seem difficult, what is certain is that local
populations’ living along the river have always been
impacted by environmental changes.
The Nubian population are among these affected people.
The Nubians, an ethnic group originating in southern
Egypt and northern Sudan, have lived along the Nile
for thousands of years. In 1899, during the construction
of the Aswan Low Dam, they were forced to move and
relocate to the west bank of the Nile in Aswan. During the
construction of the Aswan High Dam in the 1960s, over
120,000 Nubians were forced to move for a second time.
Their new home proved far from satisfactory: not a single
resettlement village was by the river. And to date, the
socio-economic and political conditions of the Nubians
have not appeared to have improved.
“I think we are passing through one of the worst
moments for us Nubians. Every time we tried to claim
some rights in the last few years, the government did not
want to listen to us and many of our activists were recently
arrested,” Mohamed Azmy, president of the General
Nubian Union, a movement that actively promotes the
right to return of the Nubian community to their ancestral
land, told IPS.
Lorri Pottinger of International Rivers told Al Jazeera
that Africa’s large dams have not reversed poverty, or
dramatically increased electricity rates, or even improved
water supply for people living near them.
“What they have done is help create a small industrial
economy that tends to be companies from Europe
and elsewhere. And so these benefits are really, really
concentrated in a very small elite,” she had said.
The demographic challenge
The reasons why Egypt faces water scarcity are numerous
but the exponential increase in population certainly
accelerates the critical situation.
The United Nations estimates that unless the current
fertility rate of 3.47 changes by 2030, Egypt’s population
is expected to grow from the current 97 million to 128
million. This demographic growth has grave implications
as it comes at a time of unprecedented challenges in the
climate which in turn has worrisome implications for loss
of arable land, rising sea levels and depletion of scarce
water resources.
Moreover, the demographic increase is having grave
consequences on the entire economic system, as there is
insufficient infrastructure and not enough jobs for the
increasing young population.
Birth control policies could be and should be part of the
solution to overcome these challenges. The government
has recently launched a campaign named ‘Kefaya etnen’
(‘Two is enough’), through which it is trying to raise
the awareness on controlling birth rates and having no
more than two children per family. “I think this is a great
initiative from the Egyptian government but it definitely
needs to permeate the society, and this will not be easy,”
said Colombo.
Egypt needs to curb its population and to turn its youth
into an asset for its economy, otherwise the waters of the
Nile could be insufficient.
Indeed, the importance of the Nile is felt in the blood
of all Egyptians. “Walking along the Nile for me is what
makes me relaxed and vent when I need it, in the chaos of
the city,” Tarek, a resident of Cairo, tells IPS.
And many Egyptians hope that this gift will be with them
forever, because it is not just about survival, but about the
essence itself of being part of these lands.
Source: IPS
Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene • November 2018
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