Guzzled by Egypt but generated in Ethiopia, the waters of the Blue Nile have long been a source of sabre-rattling. A new plan might finally put an end to the spectre of a river war

Legend has it that at the time of the pharaohs, the people of Egypt sent gifts up the Nile to the kingdom of Ethiopia to placate the Gods that fed the river�s source. Egypt had, and remains to have, good reason to be grateful: some 86 percent of the water that flows down the Blue Nile to irrigate the arid North African country emanates from floodplains on Ethiopian territory.
Yet the one-way river flow between Egypt and Ethiopia�as might be expected between a country that craves water and a country that supplies it for free�has not always resulted in such harmonious exchanges of gifts. In 1979, Egypt�s then president Anwar Sadat made the Nile�s fate into an urgent issue of national security. �The only matter that could take Egypt to war again is water,� he said in reference to Ethiopia�s plans to tap into its one precious natural asset.
The potential for conflict over the water is undeniable. Some 95 percent of the Egyptian population is packed onto the fertile ribbon of land along the banks of the Nile and its delta, the country�s only water sources of note. Desperately poor and underdeveloped Ethiopia, in contrast, has suffered periodic droughts since the 1970s, causing the loss of millions of lives. The Blue Nile1, emerging largely from Lake Tana in the Ethiopian highlands, has long been eyed as a possible source for irrigation, hydroelectricity and general economic growth in a country whose population is set to boom. At present, Ethiopia consumes a mere two percent of the water available to it.
Water distribution between the two African neighbours has always had a political edge, but by the time of Sadat�s sabre-rattling remarks, a different rivalry was poisoning relations. After flirting for a decade with the United States, Ethiopia found itself ruled in the 1970s by Colonel Mengistu Haile-Mariam�s Marxist regime. Soviet experts invited by the colonel began studying the feasibility of damming the Nile�s tributaries and exploiting its water, provoking Egypt into threatening that any dams built would be destroyed by military force.
�Although such threats gave rise to the commonly held notion that future African wars would be over water, the fact is that these tensions were a spin-off of the Cold War,� argues Rushdie Saeed, one of Egypt�s most prominent experts on water issues.
Since the end of the Cold War, however, the Nile waters have continued to prompt regular diplomatic spats. The early 1990s, for example, saw Sudan and Egypt at loggerheads following alleged efforts by the Sudanese government to overthrow Egypt�s president, Hosni Mubarak. Sudan and Ethiopia formed a joint Blue Nile Valley Organization and pledged to study several major infrastructure projects with or without Egypt�s approval. Once again, Mubarak resorted to threats of military intervention.
Though a marked improvement in relations between Cairo and Khartoum has since calmed nerves, diplomats and experts are convinced that only a lasting settlement will bring peace to the Nile�s coveted waters. Until now, only one agreement has been signed by Egypt and its neighbours�the Nile Waters Agreement of 1959 between Sudan and Egypt, itself based on a deal made by the region�s colonial powers in 1929. Ethiopia was not even mentioned in the accord.
Yet the case for some more equitable distribution of the river waters is mounting by the day. Besides Ethiopia�s traumatic droughts and destitution, studies point to a staggering rise in the country�s population: current data suggest that the population will increase from 61.4 million at present to 186 million in 2050. Given that only 1.7 percent of the country�s arable land is irrigated (compared to 100 percent of Egypt�s), an exponential rise in demand for water is only to be expected.
A durable solution might not be too far off. In July of this year, and after five years of preliminary talks, the 10 states of the Nile basin�including Egypt, the Sudan and Ethiopia�announced that they had secured World Bank money for a series of programmes to explore how the river�s waters can best be shared. The Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) has launched several such studies, due to be followed by loans worth at least three billion dollars.

Thrashing out differences
�The River Nile still has a great potential which is not yet exploited and which can be a great benefit to the people of the Nile basin,� said Egypt�s minister of public works, Mahmoud Abu Zied, in a recent interview. �Each country is entitled to an equitable share from the river without causing appreciable harm to the other riparian states.�
Underpinning the initiative is the experience of states surrounding the Mekong River in Southeast Asia. Since 1957, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand have been members of a commission charged with economic development of the river basin. Despite political differences between the nations and an absence of formal treaties, the body has helped convert the Mekong into a source of regional integration instead of rivalry: the Nam Ngum hydropower plant, completed in Laos in 1971, provided electricity to the home country and covered 80 percent of Thailand�s needs, even during the violent conflicts that followed inauguration.
With this precedent in mind, the World Bank hopes the Nile�s waters might usher in a similar spirit of co-operation. Which is not to say that members of the programme have been pulling their punches. �There are questions such as how to calculate future quotas. Should it be according to the size of the territory or the size of the population, or possibly the availability of other water resources?,� wondered one Egyptian official who took part in a recent NBI meeting in Geneva. �We all have different ideas for answers and this remains to be resolved.�
Ethiopia has already started building a series of small dams to tap the Blue Nile water. According to officials involved in the projects, these dams will benefit nations downstream by protecting Sudan from over-flooding and reducing the silt accumulation suffered by Lake Nasser dam in Egypt. But Egypt�s Saeed is unconvinced by their arguments. He insists that it is in fact more dangerous for the silt to be stopped than for it to flow with the water: should the former occur, he says, the river might gain in energy and cause havoc in the northern reaches of the Nile.
Saeed also takes issue with Ethiopia�s claims that the new dams will enable the government to sell electricity to neighbouring countries. �Which countries Ethiopian officials have had in mind is difficult to determine, however, as none of Ethiopia�s neighbours are industrialized nations or great consumers of electricity,� he observes.
All parties now admit, however, that their differences of opinion are better thrashed out at the negotiating table than left to the generals. What promised to be Africa�s next war might just have become Africa�s latest remedy.

1. The Blue Nile originates in Ethiopia, the White Nile in Uganda. The confluence of these two rivers is near Khartoum, in the Sudan. Approximately 86 percent of the Nile water flowing into Egypt is from the Blue Nile.