Ethiopia dams on Nile river stir conflict
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (UPI) Mar 16, 2011 – Ethiopia is pressing ahead with plans to build large dams on the Nile as upstream African states put pressure on a reluctant Egypt to share the waters of the world’s longest river more equitably. The Ethiopian Electric Power Corp. has awarded the Italian construction firm Salini Costruttori a contract to build three giant dams intended to generate 6,000 megawatts of electricity. Addis Ababa, which has built other dams that have infuriated Cairo, stepped up its plans after Burundi joined a May 2010 treaty signed by upstream states Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya and Rwanda to pressure Egypt, along with Sudan, to accede to their demands for a bigger share of the Nile’s water. Burundi’s action Feb. 28 means the Parliaments of the six states can now ratify the pact, the Nile Comprehensive Framework Agreement. The Democratic Republic of Congo is the only upstream state that hasn’t signed the 2010 agreement, although it is expected to. Ethiopia and its allies can be expected to intensify their campaign following the Feb. 11 downfall of Egypt’s longtime president, Hosni Mubarak amid a wave of reformist rage sweeping the Arab world. Mubarak was virulently opposed to giving up any of Egypt’s long-held riparian rights, with Sudan, to 74 percent of the Nile’s flow. That was enshrined in a 1929 agreement with the British who then ruled the region. It gave Cairo veto power over any upstream project that could interrupt the Nile’s flow. The upstream states brand that pact a relic of the colonial era that no legal weight because they weren’t party to it. The treaty affords them no rights to the Nile waters. Mubarak and his regime insisted that the Nile is Egypt’s lifeline and that the country cannot afford to relinquish its rights. … As it is, Egypt, with miniscule rainfall, can barely make ends meet with the lion’s share of the Nile waters as its population swells. It will need even more water in the future as the climate gets drier because of global climate change. However, 85 percent of the Nile’s waters originate in the Ethiopian Highlands, the source of the Blue Nile that meets the White Nile in Khartoum, capital of Sudan. The upstream states say they too need to accommodate swelling populations and need water to irrigate more farmland and to power hydroelectric projects. …
