A Decade of Regional Confrontation over the Nile Waters
A Decade of Regional Confrontation over the Nile Waters
Abstract
This article examines how unilateral actions hindered the imperative for cooperation between Ethiopia, Egypt and the Sudan over the use of the waters of the Nile River. It focuses on the remarkable strategic shift away from the idea of comprehensive Basinwide hydraulic projects – that would have benefited all the states and hence would have brought about cooperation in the Nile Valley – to Egypt’s unilateral decision to erect the High Dam at Aswan in the early 1950s. It examines in detail Ethiopia’s counter response to the Aswan High Dam Project and the subsequent Egypt-Sudanese bilateral negotiations on the division of Nile Waters through the 1959 Nile Waters Agreement, and how the discrimination inherent in the Agreement vis-à-vis the upstream countries, particularly Ethiopia, triggered long years of legal wrangling and stalemate among the Nile Basin states. It also argues that the involvement of Cold War crusaders and the Basin states’ alignment to opposing ideological camps further complicated the hydropolitics of the Nile and deepened the differences between the Basin states. Finally, the article suggests what a lasting solution to the hydropolitics of the Nile should consist of.
Metrics
The published content is property of the journal and its publisher, the Oriental Institute. The content cannot be freely distributed, unless the publisher gives a permission to publish limited content or part of the content to promote the journal.