A Decade of Regional Confrontation over the Nile Waters

A Decade of Regional Confrontation over the Nile Waters

  • Teferi Mekkonen Bekele
Keywords: Nile, Hydropolitics, Ethiopia, Egypt and the Sudan

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.

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Author Biography

Teferi Mekkonen Bekele

TEFERI MEKONNEN BEKELE is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Institute for Dispute Resolution in Africa, University of South Africa, Pretoria. He has authored a PhD dissertation “The Eastern Nile Waters Issue: A History of Confrontation, Mistrust and Attempts at Cooperation, 1950s to 2002” (Addis Ababa University, 2013).

Published
2016-05-04
How to Cite
Mekkonen Bekele, T. (2016). A Decade of Regional Confrontation over the Nile Waters: A Decade of Regional Confrontation over the Nile Waters. Archiv orientální, 84(1), 23-50. https://doi.org/10.47979/aror.j.84.1.23-50
Section
Research Article