Water War: East African Nations Squabble over River Nile as Egypt Exploits Politics to Draw More Water
Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak’s brief stopover for lunch in July in Kampala may have been less poignant had it not put everything to do with River Nile into perspective, for it triggered a bitter diplomatic row between east Africa neighbors, Tanzania and Uganda, over exploitation of its precious waters.
The East African newspaper reported this week that the spat was simmered by three previous unannounced visits to Cairo by a Ugandan water ministry official to negotiate a ’secret deal’ for Egypt to draw more of the Nile waters in contravention of existing multilateral agreements.
Dar es Salaam then demanded to see a copy of the political arrangement between Uganda, which shares Lake Victoria - which feeds the Nile - with Kenya and Tanzania, and Egypt whose economy is largely dependent on waters of the River Nile that drains into the Mediterranean.
Mubarak had made the stopover in Uganda on his way from South Africa where he had gone to rally support for Sudanese president Hassan Omar El Bashir against his likely indictment for genocide crimes in Darfur by The Hague based International Criminal Court.
It is said he used this time to seal the deal with president Yoweri Museveni over a sumptuous lunch before flying back to Cairo.
But Tanzanian authorities were so piqued by the secretive deal over the Nile that Ugandan officials who had traveled to Dar es Salaam in attempts to ease the tension received a cold reception there and were snubbed by president Jakaya Kikwete himself.
It is a water war that is threatening the establishment of a permanent Nile Basin Commission that will see the regional neighbors drawing up an equitable sharing mechanism including security of water for all the riparian neighbors.
Lake Victoria is also threatened by depleting water levels, a cause for concern for scientists and the regional governments. Uganda has faced past accusations of overdrawing waters of the lake - the world’s second largest fresh water body - into the Nile by diverting the waters to run its hydro-electric plants in Jinja.
But Museveni has rejected the suggestions blaming the phenomenon of depleting Lake Victoria waters on increased global warming instead.
Image credit: Sanjoyg at Flickr under a Creative Commons license
