Is South Africa on the brink of a 15 year cyclical drought period?

The vice president of South Africa's most prominent farmers' union says the country has traditionally had a  cycle of alternating 15 year periods of drought and abundant rain. He cautions that a dry period is about to begin, and worries that a government grappling with many other pressures is unprepared for this possibility and its consequences.

Theo de Jager is vice president of AgriSA, representing the country's dominant white farmers, who parts of the majority rule black government consider as privileged relics from the apartheid era who are always moaning and groaning about one thing or another because of the trauma of losing political control. Tensions between the black government and the white farmers rise and fall but are pretty much ever-present, particularly over the hanging sword of the inevitability of land reform to try to 'de-racialize' land holding and farming.

However, de Jager has earned himself a reputation of being of the more modern, reformist wing of what is politely called 'conservative' commercial farmers whose attitudes their critics argue are out of step with the political and demographic realities of the new, post-1994/post-apartheid South Africa.

What does bit of political history have to do with preparing for a possible long drought? Plenty, because the ruling ANC's strong, historical suspicion of/antipathy to groups like AgriSA, many of whose members were a prominent, important part of the still painfully-remembered, despised old racial order, means the warnings by de Jager even about a 'neutral' subject like preparing for drought may be ignored by those who need to make policy decisions to counter such a possibility.

de Jager says the last two decades of relative rain abundance for South Africa have also coincided with majority rule. This means a severe, prolonged dry spell would be a far-reaching crisis for which the majority rule ANC government has had no experience in handling since coming to power in 1994.

“The current government has never had to manage a drought … You think people are angry about e-Tolls, imagine how angry they will be when the costs of their food shoot up as harvests drop,” de Jager warned.

Among the coping strategies the Mail and Guardian article mentions as being required are to look at water in a regional rather than just national context. A water expert quoted says ''the value of water has to be seen
differently. Any future plans therefore have to involve a lowering of water intensity and trade-offs between the different sectors of the economy.''

Water scarcity and the need for improved management are pressing issues allover Africa and beyond, but in most places, policy makers are many steps behind farmers and others who will be most affected by the water crises that there are already many signs off allover the globe.

The Mail and Guardian article is headed 'Farming out South Africa's water worries.'

African Agriculture

Great 'water grab' accompanying foreign interest in African farm land

The banks of the Niger river, in southern Mali, have been flooded by a steady stream of foreigners. Coveted by foreign investors eager to snap up large tracts of fertile farmland, the river basin has been at the centre of a race to get hold of African land at rock-bottom prices.

Meanwhile, last week, hundreds of smallholder farmers and civil society activists flocked to the same river basin for the first international conference to tackle the global rush for land.

West Africa's largest river, the Niger is thought to sustain over 100 million people as it snakes 4,180km through Mali and Niger before emptying into Nigeria's colossal Niger Delta. In Mali, the Office du Niger is home to the vast majority of the country's largescale land deals, seen by campaigners as emblematic of the "land grabs" taking place in developing countries. Recent estimates suggest that foreign investment in Mali's limited arable land jumped by 60% between 2009 and 2010. But the potential knock-on effects of these land deals on local communities' access to water has rarely made it centre-stage.

Ongoing research from the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development seeks to redress this blindspot, honing in on how such land deals might affect water access for fishing, farming and pastoralist communities. In a policy paper out on Thursday, the IIED's Jamie Skinner and Lorenzo Cotula warn that an alarming number of African governments seem to be signing away water rights for decades, with major implications for local communities.

Investors in farmland are, understandably, after land with high growing potential – either land with lots of rainfall or land that can be irrigated. What Skinner and Cotula note is a worrying trend where governments are being rushed into signing away water rights during negotiations where they were initially only considering leasing land.

In many cases, say Skinner and Cotula, governments seem willing to simply provide water free of charge. In Mali and Sudan, for example, some investors have been given unrestricted access to as much water as they need. In other cases, where investors must pay to use water, they are often charged according to how much land is irrigated rather than how much water is used.

The role water plays in fuelling the global rush for land has received significant attention. It is no coincidence, observers say, that the most aggressive foreign investors are also those facing water shortages at home. This year, risk analysis firm Maplecroft said the results from its water stress index showed why India, South Korea and China, along with the oil rich Gulf states, are racing to buy land in developing countries and grow crops abroad. The chairman and former CEO of Nestlé, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, has gone so far as to say the global rush for farmland is actually a "great water grab". He writes in Foreign Policy: "With the land comes the right to withdraw the water linked to it, in most countries essentially a freebie that increasingly could be the most valuable part of the deal."

But the effect of these deals on local communities' water access has been a black hole in the debate around land grabs. And it is a severe omission, according to Skinner and Cotula, who stress how long-term contractural commitments with investors can jeopardise water access not only for those living near the agricultural investments but also for those living downstream. "When land is assigned to private investors, the deal only impacts directly on existing users of that land," they explain. "Allocating water to irrigated agriculture potentially affects a much broader range of users."

A 2011 report from researchers at the University of Manchester highlights similar concerns: "Impacts are likely to be far more extensive than might be anticipated from the area of land occupied … restriction or interruption of flows of water in an area occupied in one part of the landscape will have potentially widespread downstream impacts."

According to the IIED paper, in some cases estimates of potential water requirements have run so large that major dam projects are being considered to ensure supply. The controversial Gibe III dam in Ethiopia, for example, will help irrigate 150,000 hectares that the government has allocated to investors. A report published by the African Development Bank says the project could lower the water level of Kenya's Lake Turkana, on which around half a million people depend, by eight metres by 2024.

In an earlier review of land deal contracts, Cotula noted that leases in semi-arid countries would be worthless if they did not ensure access to sufficient water for agricultural use. But just as land without water may be useless to agricultural investors, the same goes for local communities. Will future water conflicts be triggered by the downstream effect of today's land grabs in Africa? Land, it seems, is only a small part of the land grab equation.

The Guardian

How a big dam fuels land grabs, hunger and conflict in Ethiopia

by Peter Bosshard

As food prices rise, the lands of rural communities are being snatched up for plantations at an alarming rate around the world. A new report documents how the controversial Gibe III Dam is fueling landgrabs in Southwestern Ethiopia right now. These grabs will compound the dam's impacts on poor communities and their unique ecosystems.

The Omo River is the lifeline of the Lower Omo Valley and the only major source of water of Lake Turkana, the world's largest desert lake. About 500,000 indigenous people are eking out a living from the fragile ecosystems of the river and lake.

The Gibe III Dam, which is currently under construction, will disrupt the river's annual flood cycle and lower the water levels of Lake Turkana. Critics have long feared that once the dam is built, the Ethiopian government will establish plantations in the Omo Valley and use the regulated water flow to irrigate export crops. The government dismissed such fears as baseless, and argued that the dam would not reduce the amount of water in the Omo River and Lake Turkana.

Now that the dam is being built, the government is showing its true colors. An official map of the Lower Omo Valley delineates three blocks of land with a total of 245,000 hectares (close to 1,000 square miles) that will be turned into sugar plantations, to be managed by a state-owned sugar company. A briefing paper by the Oakland Institute, a research and advocacy organization, suggests that in addition, 11 smaller concessions have been awarded for private cotton plantations.

Growing thirsty crops such as sugar cane and cotton for the world market does not make sense in a region that is scarce in water and prone to hunger and resource conflicts. The dam and the associated land grabs will turn the Gibe III hydropower project into a social and environmental disaster on several accounts:
A scientific study commissioned by the African Development Bank found that the Gibe III Dam will have serious impacts on Lake Turkana even without the plantations. Withdrawing large amounts of water for irrigation agriculture may push its ecosystem over the edge. The study estimates that irrigation projects could cut the amount of water in Lake Turkana by half and lead to a dramatic drop in its surface level by 20 meters.

The Lower Omo Valley is no no-man's land. It has been inhabited since time immemorial by eight indigenous peoples, including the Dassanech, Mursi and Nyangatom. If other landgrabs in Ethiopia are a model, the local populations will be kicked out from their lands without consent or compensation, and forced into resettlement camps. The government argues that the plantations will create jobs, but such jobs typically go to outsiders and not to indigenous people who have never been part of the formal economy.

The sugar plantations will occupy and affect unique ecosystems that have been protected as national parks and World Heritage Sites in Ethiopia and Kenya. In June 2011, the UN's World Heritage Committee urged the Ethiopian government to "immediately halt all construction" on the Gibe III Dam and to invite a monitoring mission to review the project's impacts on Lake Turkana.

Even where water is not scarce, large-scale irrigation projects have a bad track record in Africa, and have proven to be less effective at reducing poverty than support for the rainfed agriculture of poor farmers. A World Bank report in 2005 summarized the widespread economic, social, environmental and public health problems of large-scale irrigation projects and concluded that "investing in agricultural water management for rainfed farmers must be a priority."

As the Oakland Institute documents, the land and water grabs in the Lower Omo Valley appear imminent. Access roads have already been built, and the people who live in the target area are constantly being harassed and intimidated by the Ethiopian army. As the Institute's researcher told us after a recent visit to the area, security forces regularly visit the local villages and beat up or detain people who don't support the sugar plantations. Many villagers, the researcher told us, now run for cover whenever outsiders appear near their settlements for fear of repression.

The sugar plantations in the Omo Valley are not an isolated case. In a separate report, the Oakland Institute estimated that the Ethiopian government has turned over 14,000 square miles of agricultural lands to investors since 2008 -- usually without any benefits for the local people. The World Bank documented large-scale agricultural land deals to the amount of 175,000 square miles for 2009 alone.

Ethiopia is the world's second largest recipient of development aid. The United States, the World Bank, the European Union and the United Kingdom are among its major donors. Their assistance supports a wide variety of activities, from food aid to the government budget from which the Gibe III Dam is being funded. These donors should no longer turn a blind eye to a project that will cause environmental collapse, hunger and conflict, and violates Ethiopia's international obligations.

Huffington Post

Nile River row: Could it turn violent?

The giggles started when the seventh journalist in a row said that his question was for Egypt’s water and irrigation minister, Mohamed Nasreddin Allam.
The non-Egyptian media gave him a bit of a hammering at last week’s talks in Addis Ababa for the nine countries that the Nile passes through.

Allam bared his teeth when a Kenyan journalist accused him of hiding behind “colonial-era treaties” giving his country the brunt of the river’s vital waters whether that hurt the poorer upstream countries or not, Reuters reports.

“You obviously don’t know enough about this subject to be asking questions about it,” he snapped before later apologising to her with a kiss on the cheek.

Five of the nine Nile countries — Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Kenya — last month signed a deal to share the water that is a crucial resource for all of them. But Egypt and Sudan, who are entitled to most of the water and can veto upstream dams under a 1929 British-brokered agreement, refused.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo and Burundi have not signed yet either and analysts are divided on whether they will or not. Six Nile countries must sign the agreement for it to have any power but Egypt says even that wouldn’t change its mind. The five signatories — some of the world’s poorest countries — have left the agreement open for debating and possible signing for up to a year.

Tensions were clearly still running high after two days of negotiations in Addis and despite grinning around the table and constantly referring to each other as “my brother”, the ministers always seemed in danger of breaking into bickering.

When the Sudanese water minister said his country was freezing cooperation with the Nile Basin Initiative — the name given to the ten-year effort to agree on how to manage the river — Ethiopia’s water minister loudly protested to the media that his Sudanese colleague had not revealed that during their private meetings.

Highlighting the seriousness of the issue, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit and International Cooperation Minister Fayza Abul Naga, arrived in Addis Ababaon Wednesday to again meet Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

It’s no surprise that the spat is getting a lot of press in both Ethiopia and Egypt.

“Egypt is a gift of the Nile,” people like to say in a country that worshipped the river as a God in ancient times. “If Egypt is a gift of the Nile, then the Nile is a gift of Ethiopia,” Ethiopians shoot back with growing confidence.

And they have a point. More than 85 percent of the waters originate in Ethiopia, which relies on foreign aid for survival and sees hydropower dams as a potential cash cow and central to its plans to become one of Africa’s only power exporters.

But Egypt is not for turning. Almost totally dependent on the Nile for its agricultural output (a third of its economy) and already worried about climate change, it is determined to hold onto its 55.5 billion cubic metres of water a year, a seemingly unfair share of the Nile’s total flow of 84 billion cubic metres.

The Egyptians point out that they don’t benefit from rains like the upstream countries. Everybody, it seems, has valid points. Nobody is budging. Now some regional analysts are even saying the row could turn into the world’s first major water war and similar thoughts are being expressed in cafes from Cairo all the way upriver to Dar es Salaam.

So what next? The nine countries are due to meet again in Nairobi sometime between September and November. But where is the way forward? Who will blink first? And who really should? Could this bickering turn violent?

Reuters 

Water crisis fails to dampen Kenya farmers’ greenhouse project

by Galgallo Fayo

A pioneering group of farmers in Kenya is belatedly turning to ways of harvesting and securing water after watching a high-investment, high-return project die through water shortages.


Famine ravaged northern district of Marsabit came together to acquire a greenhouse and start vegetable farming last September, enjoying a rapid uptake in business that proved the commercial viability of their project.


The greenhouse, measuring eight by 15 metres, cost Sh161,600 to set up, 70 per cent of which was financed by the Ministry of Arid Lands while the other 30 per cent was raised by the 24 member Sagante Community Group.


When launched, the project was one of its kind and attracted admiration from surrounding farmers, who were ready to replicate it. The project was also lucrative by the standard of living in Marsabit, but only when water was available, said Mr HalakheWaqo, one of the group members


The group divided the greenhouse into two, planting half with tomatoes and half with sukuma wiki (kale). They watered the crops through drip irrigation from a raised container stationed outside the greenhouse.


Within the first six weeks, crops were ready for harvesting, and the small greenhouse was producing 35kg of tomatoes and about 30kg of sukuma wiki every five days. The harvest could have been higher with more water, said Mr Halakhe, but they rationed the water to less than the 600 litres a day required, which in turn curbed output.


Even so, within weeks of erection, the imposing white coloured greenhouse had changed the life of the villagers around as they flocked to buy the vegetables and tomatoes.


A kilogramme of the tomatoes were sold at Sh50 to Sh70, while sukuma wiki fetched about Sh500 in sales revenue a week, making for total income of between Sh2,300 and Sh3,300 a week, or up to Sh14,800 a month.

The Ministry of Lands helped by supplying some tankers of water, for which the group covered the driver’s allowance and fuel costs. But sometimes there were gaps of months in getting the tankers from the ministry


Eventually, the project ran out of water, with the nearest local water source some 30km away... and the group unable to afford to hire tankers to fetch more water. The rapid breakdown of the new project, which the farmers had planned to replicate by adding more greenhouses to raise earnings, has focused the group on ways of finding a sustainable water solution through a new, local borehole or concerted water harvesting.

“We want to look for a way to set up enough tanks to harvest water during rain, but still, getting tanks is expensive,” said Mr. Halakhe.


But the rationale, he says, is there. Apart from the initial set-up cost and the water price, the project was cheap to run, since Marsabit is fertile and needed less fertiliser than other areas.

article and photo...Business Daily Africa

KickStart pump helping to boost Africa's irrigation capacity

by Jonathan Kalan

How can Africa break out of its dependence upon subsistence farming?

One way is through simple water pumps. Across the continent farmers depend on rainfall to nourish their crops and despite hard work only manage to eke out a meager living.

An innovative manual pump system, designed to cheaply and effectively irrigate 1 to 2 acres of land is finding customers, rich and poor, across East Africa.

KickStart, creator of the pumps, is a social enterprise which for the past 22 years has designed, marketed, and sold appropriate technologies meant to “get millions of people out of poverty quickly, cost-effectively and sustainably.” The company says its aim is to “change the way the world fights poverty.”

The MoneyMaker Hip Pump and Super MoneyMaker Pump, KickStart’s two flagship products, have helped launch over 111,800 new businesses, lifted over 500,000 people out of poverty, and are generating $113 million in new profits annually through agriculture, according to their website. The pumps, on average, result in a “10-fold increase in income" for customers, according to KickStart’s co-founder Nick Moon.

“It’s not about having the best mousetrap in the world. It’s about painting it the right color, giving it the right name, and making it accessible to people,” says Moon.

Some 90 to 96 percent of sub-Saharan Africa’s population is still dependent on rain-fed agriculture, where crops can be harvested only once or twice per year, resulting in a feast-famine production cycle that continually challenges Africa.

In Tanzania, the agricultural sector accounts for nearly 80 percent of employment and 75 percent of rural household income, yet only 26.5 percent of GDP. Land for farming is readily available. Effective tools for small-scale irrigation, on the other hand, are not.

Alfred Wise, KickStart’s Country Director for Tanzania, explains that technologies such as the MoneyMaker pumps allow people “to grow more, more often.” The pumps enable small landholder farmers to switch from low value to high value crops, and become less dependent on rain.

Through marketing these cost-effective pumps, KickStart is vying to transform small, subsistence farmers into productive business units that, they hope, will feed Africa’s growing food demands.

Although KickStart is a nonprofit organization, they consider themselves a “social enterprise” because they sell their pumps, rather than distributing them for free. Through an extensive network of 220 branded dealers across Tanzania, they have sold over 40,000 pumps since beginning operations in 2000, at a price much lower than diesel pumps ($66 for the MoneyMaker Hip and $112 for the Super MoneyMaker.)

Moon says that KickStart is a nonprofit due to the high cost of funding R&D efforts for these productivity-increasing technologies. Since “the African governments are not typically funding R&D”, he says that donors are needed to support R&D and subsidize the cost of the pumps and accelerate the diffusion of this technology.

Yet the pumps have their limitations. Only 12 percent of sub-Saharan Africa’s population lives in areas with a water source within 23 feet of the surface to use the pump.

In addition, not all customers are using the pumps to be “lifted out of poverty.” Gideon Mgweno, a Monitoring and Evaluation officer for KickStart Tanzania, estimates 12 to 20 percent of their pumps are purchased by individuals who use them for domestic use, such as pumping water into an elevated tank when the electricity is out. Finally, the pump can’t help those who lack land, seeds, fertilizers and a market.

Despite their limitations, these pumps appear to highlight the power, potential and ultimate need for innovation in Africa’s agricultural sector.

Global Post

New course tackles challenges of water security and international development

The challenges of water security and international development will be tackled through a new Masters degree launched by the University of East Anglia.

Starting in September, the innovative MSc Water Security and International Development looks at 'water security' in its broad political ecology and economy sense, with the hydrological cycle connected to critical global policy concerns – such as climate change, food trade and security, and energy security - and in turn the international co-operation that affects human, community, regional and state security.

Prof John Beddington, the UK Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser, has said the world faces a ‘perfect storm’ of problems arising from shortages of food, water and energy by 2030.

The MSc Water Security and International Development aims to prepare students for employment in a wide range of areas with different employers, including non-governmental organisations, government aid agencies, and scientific and multilateral institutions.

Course director Dr Mark Zeitoun said: “Inextricably linked to people's welfare and livelihoods, water is a resource of fundamental importance to environment and development concerns. With the pressures of increasing population, a changing climate, and heightened conflicts, water security is of increasing concern for policymakers and organisations across the world.”

He added: “This new programme provides students with the latest interdisciplinary theory and tools to address the challenges ahead. They’ll be encouraged to critically reflect on the practical and theoretical facets of the concept 'water security', with a view to develop a better foundation upon which to achieve developmental and environmental objectives. It is truly interdisciplinary, as this is the only approach we can take to tackle the challenges, and students will benefit from the expertise of world-class natural and social scientists.”

The MSc Water Security and International Development will be run by the School of International Development at UEA, through the Water Security Research Centre and in co-operation with the School of Environmental Sciences. It builds on the success of water security short courses launched by the centre for policymakers and practitioners. All tutors on the MSc programme are well known internationally for their work on water and climate change, irrigation, hydrogeology, catchment management, politics, conflict and allocation.

The MSc Water Security and International Development is offered over one year full-time or two years part-time.

For further details and to apply, visit www.uea.ac.uk/dev/courses/msc-water-security-and-international-development

Kenya: Newly-introduced 'water gel' promises bumper harvest in dry spell

by Bob Koigi

Agropreneurs are halving irrigation and getting better results during dry spells, thanks to a new product that is creating water storage sacks at the roots of crops.

The water polymer, known as Belsap, comes as granules that are added to the soil at planting time, but which expand by up to 400 times their original size during rains, storing water that they then release, together with nutrients, during dry spells.

The granules are thoroughly mixed with the soil, but only a pinch needs to be applied. Once exposed to moisture, the granules transform into gel or crystals, as they take in the surrounding water.

The performance of these expanded water-containing gels among farmers who cultivate crops as diverse as wheat, sorghum and horticultural crops has been uniform and impressive, with crops gaining the strength to produce more tillers - shoots that grow from the bottom of the original stalk.


Quality Farm Produce, which occupies some 80 hectares, has began using the granules for growing horticulture produce. With Nyeri set some 1800m above sea level, its conditions can be similar to semi-arid regions, said the farm’s manager, David Wainaina. “This means that water is a big issue here, especially considering that the tender stem broccoli and the runner beans we plant use a lot of water,” he said.

The tender stem broccoli alone consumes up to 40 cubic metres of water per hectare per day. But Wainaina reports that the farm now only needs to irrigate the crop three days a week, as opposed to irrigating daily as it did previously.

Moreover, the farm has found that the roots of a week-old broccoli plant grown using Belsap are five centimetres long, which is three centimetres longer than plants grown without the polymer at the same stage of germination. The water polymer has also helped in preventing leaching, where fertilisers are washed away from the soil around plants. Belsap does not substitute for the use of fertiliser, said Mr Wainaina, but can be applied simultaneously with the seed and fertiliser.

Jean Njiru, the national sales manager of Bell Industries Limited, the company importing the polymer into Kenya from the US, said that approximately eight kgs of Belsap is needed per hectare of land - depending on the type of crop and soil. Once in the soil, Belsap repeatedly absorbs moisture and stores it. Since roots respond to the moisture, they will grow toward and around the gel. The compound can stay in the soil for seven years if not disturbed.

Although the water polymer has been in Kenya for only three years, it has been in use in the developed world for 40 years, where it is used in many ways in addition to its use in agriculture. It is often added to the soil of potted plants, under lawns and in areas growing grass for as livestock fodder.

Business Daily Africa

Kenya: Flower farms not at fault for lake pollution, says report

by Noah Cheploen

Flower farms are not entirely to blame for the problems facing Kenya's Lake Naivasha and the environment around it.

Scientists from Britain's University of Leicester said that the country's second largest fresh water lake was receding because of over-exploitation, among other factors.


Dr David Harper and Ed Morrison said that evidence indicates that the fast growing flower industry is very well-controlled, thus not a major risk to survival of the water resource.


“The real cause of the lake’s deterioration,” says Harper, “is the same basic cause as everywhere else in the world – too many people using up too much water and wasting most of it because they think it is free.”

The findings were contained in a report delivered to Prime Minister Raila Odinga by the two scientists.

“It is very easy to come to Lake Naivasha as a visitor or journalist, see all the greenhouses around the lake and immediately just blame flower growing,” said Harper, whohas been researching on Rift Valley lakes for the last 30 years. .

Flower growing is important to the country’s economy because it is the biggest earner of foreign exchange – above tourism, coffee and tea. Over half of all roses sold in UK supermarkets come from Naivasha.

“The flower industry is conscientious about the water taken out most particularly the growers who sell to European supermarkets because they know that consumer groups can keep a check on the water they use as well as the conditions of their workers.

“UK supermarkets should realise though, that they are being left behind by the Europeans. The Swiss and the Germans can see that, to make their supply chain sustainable, they need to put some profits back into ecological restoration. British supermarkets need to do more or they could lose the market in a few years time,” he said.

In2EastAfrica

Shrinking Lake Chad turning farmland into desert

by Isha Sesay

From droughts causing bad harvests, to floods destroying farms and homes, life in Africa's Sahel belt can be a constant struggle.

The arid belt of land stretches from Senegal in the west, all the way across the continent to Ethiopia in the east. With the Sahara to the north, and the savannah to the south, it's a region that experiences extreme dry and wet seasons.

In the middle of it all is Lake Chad, the most reliable resource in this region of shifting extremes. More than 20 million people depend on the freshwater lake for their survival. But it's been shrinking over the past 50 years and satellite images show it is now just a twentieth of its former size.

Huge expanses of water are now nothing more than a series of ponds and islands, and the once-fertile land that surrounds the lake is now dusty and barren.

"If there are solutions we must find them," said Farid Dembell, from the Society for the Development of Lake Region. "The lake is in the process of disappearing and the lake feeds many people, not just here but in other countries like Nigeria, Cameroon and Niger," he continued. "They are all people who live on Lake Chad."

The way of life in this area stretches back centuries and many earn a living fishing in the lake.

Locals report that they are catching less fish and the ones that they do catch are smaller than they used to be.

A declining stock could have devastating consequences far beyond the water's edge, says Yakowra Mallom, from UNICEF.

"At the start we didn't know anything about the problem of malnutrition," she said. "But now the figures are enormous. The children are all malnourished. There are no more fish. There's no more milk, no maize, no vegetables or cereal."

Local communities say the changing weather is the biggest reason for the shrinking of the lakes shores. The necessary irrigation of farming land has also been a factor.

But some people are making efforts to save their livelihoods.

A small local group is trying to save the surrounding land by planting trees in the villages that have been worst affected by desertification. If they cannot bring back the lake, they hope there will at least be workable land.

Saleh Sagoubi heads up the Tree Planting Association, a volunteer organization that has around 50 young members.

"I was born here and I grew up here," he said. "I want the lake to come back, not just for me, but for the children of the future."

Sagoubi blames climate change for turning much of the once-fertile land of the Sahel into desert. His group is trying to hold back the Sahara with a "great green wall" of drought-resistant trees.

"To stop the Sahara we must make lots of effort day and night -- we must work," he said.

"The desert will be stopped one day by trees; they are our weapons of mass destruction."

CNN

To Egypt's chagrin, Burundi joins controversial Nile Basin pact

by Ahmed Zaki Osman


Burundi has officially joined several fellow upstream countries in an alternative Nile Basin initiative, allowing the pact to come into force without Egypt’s approval.

Tensions in the Nile Basin between upstream and downstream countries have long been a key diplomatic issue for Egypt.

Six upstream countries have so far signed on to the Entebbe-based Nile Basin Initiative (NBI), which will establish the Nile Basin Commission, a body mandated with deciding on river projects in basin countries.

“Burundi took advantage of recent political turmoil in Egypt and hurried to sign the initiative. It knows that Cairo has its hands full with domestic issues after the removal of [former president Hosni] Mubarak,” said Amany al-Taweel, an expert in African affairs at the semi-official Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies.

After 18 days of massive protests, sit-ins, marches and civil disobedience, Mubarak was forced on 11 February to leave the office he had occupied for 30 years.

In November, after a meeting with Mubarak, Burundian Presidential Adviser Mohammad Rokara had said that his country would “never take a position that conflicted with Egypt's interests.”

Egypt's population of some 85 million draws about 90 percent of its water needs from the Nile. Officials, for their part, warn that the alternative water agreement would be unable to provide Egypt’s growing population with its water needs beyond 2017.

Critics have often blamed Egypt’s ousted president for ignoring Africa and for failing to deepen Egypt’s strategic ties with the states of the Nile Basin.

Experts also blast Egyptian foreign policy for being slow to deal with perceived threats to the strategically-important river. They accuse it of encouraging Nile Basin countries to seek alternatives to the historical agreements that have regulated usage of Nile water resources for most of the last century.

“Egyptian diplomats go everywhere except Africa. Mubarak was always in Sharm El-Sheikh while his foreign minister [Ahmed Abul Gheit] was touring Europe. There was no interest whatsoever in the African continent,” said columnist and pan-Arab political activist Ahmed al-Gamal.

“It’s time to reconsider Africa as a priority in our foreign policy. We can provide technical assistance for electricity projects and farming expertise on the basis that we are equal. There shouldn’t be a sense of Egyptian superiority,” added al-Gamal.

Hussein al-Otaify, Egypt’s newly-appointed minister of irrigation and water resources, held an urgent meeting with other concerned state bodies. Al-Otaify has said his ministry would draft an “urgent plan of action” in order to deal with the Nile issue, stressing that Egypt planned to take part in several bilateral projects with Nile Basin countries while calling on upstream states to preserve “Egypt’s historical rights in the Nile.”

Last year, after a decade of talks, four upstream basin countries--Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania and Ethiopia--signed a pact allowing for what they said was a more equitable use of Nile water.

Under the Cooperative Framework Agreement, Ethiopia intends to build dams and export power to neighboring countries, while also establishing a host of irrigation projects.

Egypt and Sudan, both of which condemned the pact, have argued that their respective water supplies would be dangerously reduced if upstream countries were allowed to divert the flow of the river without multilateral consultation.

Egypt says that all Nile Basin countries must approve any initiatives involving the river to ensure that its traditional share remains unaffected, in accordance with international treaties signed in 1929 and 1959.

In 1929, imperial Britain, representing a number of Nile Basin countries, signed a deal with the Egyptian government for the distribution of Nile water. The terms of the treaty granted Egypt 55.5 billion square meters of water annually, out of the estimated 84 billion square meters that flow through Sudan every year.

East African countries have long complained about the negative effects of the colonial-era 1929 treaty, which allows Egypt to veto any irrigation or hydro-power projects proposed by upstream countries.

Under a 1959 Nile water agreement with Sudan, Egypt receives the lion's share of Nile water. Sudan, the next largest recipient, is allotted 18 billion cubic meters per year. This means that the two downstream countries account for more than 90 percent of all Nile water.

Such agreements have effectively given Egypt veto rights over all upstream projects.

“Egypt has applied a strategy that puts emphasis on the authority and validity of the traditional treaties of 1929 and 1959,” said al-Taweel.

Egyptian experts argue that disputes between Egypt and Nile Basin countries are of a "technical" rather than “political” nature. They assert that there is more than enough Nile water for all countries of the Nile Basin.

“The foreign policy of post-Mubarak Egypt will not abandon the strategy of commitment to the traditional treaties, but Cairo will show more interest in cooperating--economically and strategically--with other Nile Basin states,” al-Taweel said.

While upstream nations have refused to change the newly signed Cooperative Framework Agreement as per Cairo’s requests, the NBI scheduled an extraordinary meeting in January aimed at changing Egypt’s mind about the accord.

The meeting, however, was cancelled due to Egypt’s popular uprising, but is now slated to take place in Nairobi later this month.

Moreover, an African summit on Nile water usage, originally scheduled to be held in the Ugandan capital of Kampala in January, was also cancelled as a result of recent political turbulence.

www.almasryalyoum.com

Egypt threatened to use force over threats to Nile waters - Wikileaks

by Jeff Otieno

The government of the ousted Egyptian strongman, Hosni Mubarak, at one time considered the use of force if upstream countries threatened its historical rights to the use of the Nile waters.

The administration was incensed by riparian states insistence on using the Nile for irrigation and other water consuming projects.

According to confidential cables sent to Washington by American diplomats based in Cairo, the Mubarak administration viewed access to its quota of Nile waters as a national security issue, “and a creation of a system that threatens this quota will be seen as an existential threat.”

The documents, written in 2009 and released by the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks, said Egypt felt its existence as a nation was under threat, following the failure of upstream countries to guarantee access to 55.5 billion cubic metres of water annually.

“Upstream countries led by Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda argued that climate change has changed the circumstances, making it difficult to rely on rain-fed agriculture, and they need to use Nile water for agriculture, power, fisheries and other water-dependent industries necessary for their security,” said one of the cables sent by the US embassy in Cairo.

Egypt, however, with some support from Sudan, maintained that downstream countries must approve any water use by upstream countries that could reduce their “guaranteed quotas” and threaten their existence.

The use of the Nile, the world’s longest river, has in the recent past become controversial with analysts warning that it might be a potential for water wars is not carefully handled.

The Nile is an important resource for millions of people in East, Central and North Africa.

It has improved food security through fishing and farming, helped many access electricity generated by hydropower plants and contributed to the growth of agro-based industries, employing millions of people.

The major dams on the Nile are Roseires Dam, Sennar Dam, Aswan High Dam, and Owen Falls Dam.

The Nile Basin Initiative was established in 1999, by riparian states to promote co-operation and equitable use of the waters.

The members are Burundi, D.R Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda.

All the upstream countries, except Burundi and D.R Congo, have already signed the Nile Basin Draft Agreement, which has been contested by Egypt and Sudan.

If the two upstream countries sign the document, this year, it will pave the way for ratification of a pact that strips Egypt of its veto powers to the flow of the Nile.

Egypt pointed fingers at Kenya and Tanzania for being vocal about using Nile water for development “and have made domestic political promises to do so.”

“According to Khalil, Kenya accused Egypt of taking Lake Victoria water to cultivate two million acres of food in Uganda. Metawie stated that diminishing water levels are as a result of Uganda releasing water for power generation, not agricultural cultivation,” says one of the documents.

The destiny of the new Egypt is to become the lion of Africa

Both Rafik Khalil and Fattah Metawie, were part of the delegation dispatched to negotiate with the other riparian states on the use of the resource.

The delegation insisted that attempts by the upstream states to set up a Nile River Basin Commission laid ground for “abuse of Nile Waters” and violated the spirit of “consensus.”

The East African

Burundi signs accord on use of Nile River water

by David Malingha Doya

Burundi became the sixth nation to sign an agreement on water usage from the Nile River, enabling ratification of an accord that may strip Egypt of its veto power over rights to the flow from the world’s longest river.

“The government of Burundi sent an e-mail to technical advisory committee members confirming they have signed and asked us to join them in congratulating them upon this landmark achievement,” said Shillingi Mugisha, a member of the Nile Technical Advisory Committee.

A 1929 treaty brokered by the former colonial power, Britain, granted Egypt a veto over projects that may alter the flow of the Nile. A 1959 accord between Egypt and Sudan claimed 90 percent of the Nile’s flow for the two countries.

The so- called Cooperative Framework Agreement, signed by Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya in May, will establish a commission to oversee dam building and irrigation development, effectively stripping Egypt of the veto. Almost all of Egypt’s water supply comes from the Nile.

“We are happy to join our colleagues in East Africa in signing this agreement,” Burundian Water and Environment Minister Jean-Marie Nibirantije said in a phone interview today from Bujumbura, the Burundian capital.

Egypt warned in April, before the five countries signed the accord, that it would withdraw from the Nile Basin Initiative, a nine-member convention on cooperation in the Nile basin known as the NBI, if the seven upstream states signed the accord.

A sixth signatory was needed for the CFA to come into force and once it has been ratified by the six national legislatures, a Nile Basin Commission will be created. The remaining upstream nation, Eritrea, wasn’t involved in talks leading to the accord. The CFA states that the commission will resolve the issue of water security in its first six months of operations.

Abdel Fattah Metawie, head of the unit responsible for Nile water in the Egyptian Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation, didn’t respond to e-mailed questions sent today seeking comment. Egypt and Sudan in January asked Nile basin countries to meet to discuss the legal implications of not all riparian states signing the agreement.

“The meeting was postponed because of the political problem in Egypt, but could take place next month,” Ethiopian Water and Energy Minister Alemayehu Tegenu said in a Feb. 22 interview from Goma, in eastern Congo.

The Democratic Republic of Congo, which led a campaign for countries to sign the agreement in 2009, plans to sign the accord at an unspecified future date, Environment Minister Jose Endundo said in an interview on Feb. 22.

Some projects being considered on the Nile include a 60 to 80-megawatt hydropower plant at Rusumo Falls to serve Rwanda, Tanzania and Burundi, according to information from NBI. Building the power-generation plant and cross-border transmission lines over the next four years may cost $350 million, it said.

“For the actual investment projects like irrigation schemes, watershed management, electricity generation and transmission, we estimated the cost at $784 million in 2010,” Khairy Wael, executive director of the NBI, said in a Feb. 22 interview from Goma. “We forecast investment to be $2.4 billion by 2014.”

The Nile River’s average discharge is about 300 million cubic meters per day, according to the website of the Nile Basin Initiative. Ethiopia is the source of about 85 percent of the water that flows to Sudan and Egypt.

“It’s big news for us,” Ethiopian Foreign Ministry spokesman Dina Mufti said by phone today from Debre Zeit, Ethiopia. “We think this is in the interests of Burundi and all riparian countries. We believe it’s even in the interests of Egypt, as this is the only way we can be in a win-win situation.”

Bloomberg

Africa’s flourishing Niger Delta threatened by Libya water plan

by Fred Pearce

Threatened by Libya Water Plan Daouda Sanankoua is an aquatic mayor, and proud of it. The elected boss of the district of Deboye arrived for our meeting in the West African state of Mali last month by overnight ferry. At this time of year, the majority of his district is flooded. Thank goodness. “More water is good,” he said, peering at his foreign inquisitor over his glasses. “Everything here depends on the water, but the government is taking our water.”

While we spoke, in the tiny schoolyard of Akka village, a few meters from the lapping waters of Lake Deboye, the headlines around the world brought news of flood disasters in Australia, Brazil, and Sri Lanka. But Daouda was grateful for the annual swelling of the River Niger, which left most of his 24 villages marooned. For without the water, they would be desert.

The floods in what geographers call the inner Niger delta nurture abundant fish for the Bozo people, who lay their nets in every waterway and across the lakes. As the waters recede, they leave wet soils in which the Bambara people plant millet and rice, and they expose vast aquatic pastures of bourgou (or hippo grass) that sustain cattle and goats brought by nomadic Fulani herders from as far away as Mauritania and Burkina Faso. This inland delta is Africa’s second-largest floodplain and one of its most unique wetlands. Seen from space, it is an immense smudge of green and blue on the edge of the Sahara.

But this rare and magnificently productive ecosystem is now facing an unprecedented threat, as a Libyan-backed enterprise has begun construction of a project inside Mali that will divert large amounts of Niger River water for extensive irrigation upstream.

This is all part of a grand plan by Gaddafi to make his desert nation self-sufficient in food.This is all part of a grand plan by Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi to make his desert nation self-sufficient in food through long-term deals with nearby countries to grow food for Libya. Mali’s president has agreed to the scheme, which numerous experts say will enhance Libyan food security at the expense of Malian food security by sucking dry the river that feeds the inland delta, diminishing the seasonal floods that support rich biodiversity — and thriving agriculture and fisheries vital to a million of Mali’s poorest citizens — on the edge of the Sahara desert.

“More people will lose than win from most irrigation projects in Mali,” says Jane Madgwick, CEO of Netherlands-based Wetlands International, with whom I traveled for three days in the inner Niger delta. “These projects will decrease food security by damaging the livelihoods of those most vulnerable. What they are trying to do at the moment makes no sense because there is simply not enough water.”

Larger than Belgium, the Niger’s inland delta, laced with rivers and marshes, runs for 250 miles from northeast to southwest in central Mali, one of Africa’s poorest countries. The rights to harvest the delta’s fish and graze pastures are based on long-standing custom neither known nor recognized beyond its borders. I had spent days exploring this world as the seasonal floodwaters began to recede. I watched the arrival of the Fulani and talked to fishing families as they packed up their homes and left their villages to set up temporary camps beside the pools where the fish would concentrate in the weeks ahead.

Out there in the waters somewhere were a few surviving hippos, African manatees, and the odd crocodile. Madgwick constantly grabbed her binoculars to spot kingfishers, marsh harriers, cormorants, and purple herons, many of them winter migrants from Europe. Her organization is working with locals to revive flooded forests destroyed in past droughts, to maintain fish ponds among the flooded grasses, to extend the new practice of cultivating bourgou, and to encourage kitchen gardens planted by women’s groups.

But all this is threatened by events upstream, said the mayor: Others want his water. Over a torch-lit evening meal of Nile perch, millet porridge, and bananas — all fruits of the wetland — he said that this year the rains were good and the waters high. But even so, some dams built prior to the Libyan project, which irrigate 235,000 acres, have already diverted water and changed the timing of when it reaches the wetland, damaging the wet pastures and upsetting fish breeding. Some species have disappeared as a result. And, say Madgwick and others, much worse is to come.

Daouda Sanankoua said dams have already diverted water and changed the timing of when it reaches his district. Libya’s wholesale move into Malian irrigation and agriculture is the result of a secret deal between Mali’s president, Amadou Toumani Toure, and Libya’s Colonel Gadaffi. Paid for by Gadaffi’s sovereign investment fund, theLibya Africa Portfolio Fund for Investment, the deal hands the land to a Libyan-controlled organization called Malibya for 50 years and gives the Libyans undisclosed rights to the region’s water. Why would the Mali president sign up to this?

Local campaigners say their government is in thrall — and hock — to Libya because it has become dependent on Libya for aid and investment. Many of its civil servants work in offices built by Libya, and international visitors stay at Libyan-built hotels. And, says Lamine Coulibaly, head of communications for the Mali small farmers’ union, CNOP, the government is so obsessed with getting investment for its agriculture that it cannot see when that investment will do more harm than good to its people.

Before going to the delta, I had visited a new canal stretching 25 miles north from the River Niger to 250,000 acres of proposed irrigated land at the edge of the marshes. The canal, part of the Libyan project, was dug last year by Chinese contractors, who are now preparing the first 15,000 acres of fields.

The project is one of many major investments by Libya all across Mali. Gadaffi is using his petrodollars to fund government buildings, hotels, and other high-profile infrastructure. Critics such as Coulibaly call the farm mega-project a land grab. But far more important, it is also a water grab on a huge scale. Coulibaly adds: “We have enough land; we don’t have enough water.”

The scale is breathtaking. The brand new intake works for the scheme can grab as much as 210 cubic meters a second, potentially more than doubling
The delta is a vital green resource for both humans and wildlife on the edge of the Sahara.the amount of water taken from the river for irrigation. The director general of Malibya, Abdalilah Youssef, boasted in 2008 that his new canal could supply up to 4 cubic kilometers of water a year to the enterprise’s fields of rice, tomatoes, and fodder crops for cattle. The current take for all other existing irrigation projects is 2.7 cubic kilometers a year.

Already, engineers at the Office du Niger — an agency created by presidential fiat to develop land upstream of the inner Niger delta — admit they are struggling to maintain the minimum flow of 40 cubic meters a second down the Niger to the delta during the dry season, when an estimated 70 percent of river flow goes to farms rather than the wetland. The effects of taking more could be catastrophic on the floating forests and bourgou pastures at the heart of the delta’s ecosystems and human livelihoods.

A vital green resource for both humans and wildlife on the edge of the Sahara, the delta is a wintering ground for millions of migrating European birds and is vital to the flow of the Niger River and its fisheries. All this is threatened by the Libyan project. For example, planned dams and diversions will reduce the growth of the important bourgou grasses by almost two-thirds, according to a study by Leo Zwarts, a water management expert for the Dutch government.

Now, however, Malian officials have no control over the project. Their president has signed that away. They say the Libyans have carried out a social and environmental impact assessment, although its contents have not been made public. The job of the Malian officials is simply to organize compensation for the thousands of people who are expected to lose their homes to the irrigation projects and to find new land for those farmers who refuse to be turned into Gadaffi’s laborers.

There is no official confirmation, but few doubt that the rice grown here will go to Libya. More than 1,200 miles away across the Sahara, Gaddafi has spent $30 billion over the past three decades building the Great Man-made River, which pumps ancient water from deep beneath the desert through 1,800 miles of huge pipes to irrigate farms on the Mediterranean coast. But even with that giant hydrological enterprise in operation, Libya still depends on foreign markets for three-quarters of its grain.

The giant farm being built on the edge of the inner Niger delta by Malibya is his next big gambit.

Mali of course needs development. It is changing and so are the wants and needs of its people. Schools and clinics are starting to appear; every fishing encampment, however temporary, has a TV antenna; the fishing nets are
Any disruption of the region’s traditional way of life could feed Al Qaeda’s violent agenda.made of nylon and come from China; the kids wear Obama T-shirts and support European soccer teams; motorbikes are starting to replace donkeys; there is sporadic cellphone coverage and young village men break the still wetland nights with their sound systems. These days, too, traditional lines of ethnicity and livelihood are blurred as cattle herders take up fishing, fishers harvest grain, and millet farmers go herding. But the fecundity of the delta remains the basis of their survival in one of the poorest countries on Earth.

Many government officials see saving the wetland as an environmental priority they cannot afford in the push for human development. But in fact, maintaining the wetland is essential to development.

This year, the Mali government is expected to publish a ten-year “sustainable development plan” for the delta. Early drafts are said to sanction a big expansion of irrigation. European aid agencies funding the process have reportedly demanded a rewrite. Whatever it finally contains, the plan faces a long consultation process before being enacted, by which time the game may be over, the water swallowed up by the Libyan project and others.




MORE FROM YALE e360

Does Egypt Own The Nile?
A Battle Over Precious Water
A dispute between Egypt and upstream African nations has brought to the fore a long-standing controversy over who has rights to the waters of the Nile. The outcome, Fred Pearce writes, could have profound consequences for the ecological health of the river and for one of the world’s largest tropical wetlands.
READ MOREThis may not just be a local matter either. With Al Qaeda busy recruiting disaffected people such as the Tuareg nomads around Mali’s borders, any disruption to the traditional way of life could feed its violent agenda.

So this is a key moment that will likely determine the fate of one of Africa’s great natural resources, a living embodiment of how humans and nature can live not just in harmony but in synergy. Get it wrong and they will be creating new desert while claiming all the while to be greening it. Get it wrong and the repercussions could spread far and wide.

As we left the heart of the wetland for the provincial town of Mopti, our boat kept grounding on the bottom of the narrower waterways. Macaques laughed as we scrambled to resume our journey. The low water was simply a sign of the changing season, but it felt like an omen for the wetland.

POSTED ON 03 FEB 2011 IN BUSINESS & INNOVATION POLICY & POLITICS POLICY & POLITICS SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY SUSTAINABILITY WATER AFRICA NORTH AMERICA

http://e360.yale.edu/feature/a_major_libyan_water_project_puts_africas_niger_delta_at_risk/2366/

UN map lays out Africa's water resources challenges

The major challenges facing Africa's water resources have been laid out in striking clarity in a new atlas compiled by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The Africa Water Atlas uses hundreds of 'before and after' shots, detailed new maps and satellite images from 53 countries to show the problems facing Africa's water supplies, such as the drying of Lake Chad and the erosion of the Nile Delta, as well as new, successful methods of conserving water.

Some of the most arresting images in the Atlas, which was launched during Africa Water Week in Addis Ababa, include green clouds of eroded soil and agricultural run-off in Uganda, pollution from oil spills in Nigeria and a 3km segment of the Nile Delta that has been lost to erosion.

Research carried out for the Atlas shows that the amount of water available per person in Africa is declining. At present, only 26 of the continent's 53 countries are on track to attain the water-provision target of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to reduce by half the proportion of the population without sustainable access to drinking water by 2015.

Furthermore, only eight African countries (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Botswana, Angola, South Africa and Egypt) are expected to attain the MDG target of reducing by half the proportion of the population without sustainable access to basic sanitation by 2015.

But in addition to these water challenges, the Atlas maps out new solutions and success stories from across the continent. It contains the first detailed mapping of how rainwater conservation is improving food security in drought-prone regions. Images also reveal how irrigation projects in Kenya, Senegal and Sudan are helping to improve food security.

The Atlas, compiled by UNEP at the request of the African Ministers' Council on Water (AMCOW) shows how the challenges of water scarcity in Africa are compounded by high population growth, socioeconomic and climate change impacts and, in some cases, policy choices.

Prepared in cooperation with the African Union, European Union, US Department of State and United States Geological Survey, the 326-page atlas gathers information about the role of water in Africa's economies and development, health, food security, transboundary cooperation, capacity building and environmental change in one comprehensive and accessible volume.

Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director, said: "The dramatic changes sweeping Africa linked with both positive and negative management of this continent's vital water resources is graphically brought home in this Atlas.

"From the dams triggering erosion on the Nile Delta to pollution in the Niger River Basin, the way infrastructure development or uncontrolled oil spills are impacting the lives and livelihoods of people are all brought into sharp relief. But so too are the many attempts towards sustainable management of freshwaters - for example the controlled releases from dams on Chad's Logone River that are restoring in part the natural flooding cycles leading to the recovery of economically-important ecosystems," he said.

"Previous atlases in which UNEP has partnered have triggered change including sparking government efforts to restore the Mau forest complex in Kenya to Lake Faguibine in Mali. I am sure that the before and after images presented in this Africa Water Atlas can also catalyze both greater awareness of the challenges and the choices and decisive, restorative and sustainable action on the ground," added Mr. Steiner.

In total, the Africa Water Atlas features over 224 maps and 104 satellite images as well as some 500 graphics and hundreds of compelling photos. The 'before' and 'after' photographs, some of which span a 35-year period, offer striking snapshots of local ecosystem transformation in several watersheds being converted to agriculture across the continent.

In addition to well-publicised changes, such as the drying up of Lake Chad, one of the Sahel's largest freshwater reservoirs, or the declining Lake Faguibine in the Niger River Basin and falling water levels in Lake Victoria, the Africa Water Atlas presents satellite images of lesser-known environmental challenges including:

* Erosion and sinking of the Nile Delta: The Rosetta Promontory lost over 3 km to erosion between 1968 and 2009, while the Damietta Promontory eroded 1.5 km between 1965 and 2008. Furthermore, the delta is currently sinking under its own weight, as new deposits of soil no longer offset the natural effect of soil compaction.
* Surface runoff from the Entebbe area south of Kampala, Uganda shows up as greenish clouds expanding out into the water as eroded soil, agricultural runoff and domestic waste runs into Lake Victoria, degrading water quality.
* In the Niger River Basin, thousands of oil spills, totaling over three million barrels of oil and wastewater from oil production, are among the primary causes of a serious decline in water quality.
* Overflow from Egypt's Lake Nasser spillway created the Toshka lakes, which have since largely disappeared due to evaporation and, to a lesser degree, infiltration.

The Africa Water Atlas also draws attention to Africa's "water towers", which are sources for many of Africa's transboundary rivers and contribute immensely to the total stream flow of African major rivers. These supply life-giving resources and services in downstream areas such as water for hydropower, wildlife and tourism, small and large scale agriculture, municipalities and ecosystem services. The Water Atlas shows that most of these water towers, from the Middle Atlas Range in Morocco through to the Lesotho Highlands in Southern Africa, are under extreme pressure as a result of deforestation and encroachment.

* Many areas of the Mau Forest Complex, the largest of Kenya's water towers, had already been converted to agriculture in the 1970s. Over 100 000 ha of forest, representing roughly one-quarter of the Mau Complex's area, have been destroyed since 2000. By 2009, several additional large forest areas had been converted to agriculture.

Africa is known to be a global "hotspot" for water constrained, rain-fed agriculture and climate-driven food insecurity with about 100 million people in Africa living in these areas. But new research, captured in the Atlas, reveals that there are also "hopespots" in drought-prone environments where there is enormous potential for expanding simple water-harvesting techniques.

For the first time, the wide distribution of these "hopespots" has been overlain on a map. Images from the Water Atlas show how the successful harvesting of rainwater in the Horn of Africa, particularly in Kenya, is already mitigating the risk for farmers and helping to reduce food insecurity in their communities.

The Atlas also highlights positive examples of water management that are protecting against, and even reversing, degradation.

* The damming of the Logone River in the Lake Chad Basin in the 1970s coincided with a period of drought that reduced overbank flooding and disrupted local livelihoods on the Waza Logone Floodplain. Managed releases from the dam beginning in the 1990s restored some of the natural flooding, bringing improved grazing and the return of other valuable ecosystem functions.
* Sudan's massive Gezira Irrigation Scheme, built in the early 20th century, and other schemes such as Rahad, New Halfa and the Kenana Sugar Plantation, which were built in the 1960s and 1970s, help rank Sudan second in Africa after Egypt in terms of land under irrigation.
* Along the Senegal River, irrigation schemes beginning in the 1940s and other large investments in the 1980s, including the construction of the Manantali Dam in Mali and the Diama Dam in Senegal, have increased irrigation potential within the Senegal Basin.
* The Great Man-Made River Project in Libya, which began roughly 30 years ago, is among the largest civil engineering projects in the world. The project brings water from well fields in the Sahara to Libya's growing population. The majority of the system's water comes from Libya's two largest groundwater resources?the Murzuq and Kufra groundwater basins. As much as 80 per cent of Libya's groundwater is used for agriculture.

Main Findings and Key Concerns

The main findings of the Africa Water Atlas present challenges and opportunities for Africa as the continent strives to improve the quantity, quality and use of its water resources. These challenges focus on the two-sided nature of water issues in Africa: surplus and scarcity, under developed and over-exploited.

Overall, according to the authors, more than 40 percent of Africa's population lives in arid, semi-arid and dry humid areas. The amount of water available per person in Africa is far below the global average and is declining. Groundwater is falling and rainfall is also declining in some regions. Development of water resources is inadequate and prices to access water are generally distorted, with water provision highly inefficient.

After Australia, Africa is the world's second-driest continent. With 15 percent of the global population, it has only 9 percent of global renewable water resources. Water is unevenly distributed, with Central Africa holding 50.66 percent of the continent's total internal water and Northern Africa only 2.99 per cent.

The groundwater resources represent only 15 percent of total renewable water resources, but supply about 75 percent of Africa's population with most of its drinking water. In all regions except central Africa, water availability per person (4 008 m3 in 2008) is under both the African and global averages and lower than that of all of other world regions except Asia, the most populous continent.

Most of the urban population growth has taken place in peri-urban slum neighbourhoods, overwhelming the capacity of water supply networks and resulting in an overall decline in piped water coverage. Between 2005 and 2010, Africa's urban population grew at a rate of 3.4 per cent, or 1.1 percent more than the rural population.

Only 26 of the 53 countries are on track to attain the MDG water-provision target of reducing by half the proportion of the population without sustainable access to drinking water by 2015.

Of Africa's 53 countries, only eight are expected to attain the target of reducing by half the proportion of the population without sustainable access to basic sanitation by 2015.

Opportunities to address the woefully inadequate access to improved sanitation include the potential to encourage and support simple entrepreneurial solutions and to embark on a new drive to revolutionize toilets so they are as desirable as mobile phones. The number of mobile cell phone subscribers in Africa reached 448.1 million in 2009, representing an increase of 75 million new users since the previous year and an impressive growth of 20 percent in the customer base since 2008.

Data in the Africa Water Atlas shows that the adoption of improved sanitation, however, has grown at a much slower rate. The vast improvements being made in access to communications technologies in Africa provides an example of how innovation and entrepreneurship in sanitation technologies could also reap economic benefits and improve health and well-being.

Africa has 63 shared water basins. It is a challenge to address potential conflicts over transboundary water resources. On the other hand, there are already at least 94 international water agreements in Africa to cooperatively manage shared waters.

Water scarcity challenges Africa's ability to ensure food security for its population. Agriculture uses the most water in Africa and the estimated rate of agricultural output increase needed to achieve food security is 3.3 percent per annum.

Hydroelectricity supplies 32 percent of Africa's energy, but its electricity use is the lowest in the world. Africa's hydropower potential is under-developed.

Africa is endowed with large and often under-utilized aquifer resources that contain excellent quality water and could provide water security in times of drought. But the continent faces the challenge of providing enough water for its people in a time of growing demand and increased scarcity.

Africa is one of the most vulnerable continents to climate change and climate variability. The continent is already subject to important spatial and temporal rainfall variability. Some regions are becoming drier and floods are occurring more regularly with severe impacts on people's livelihoods.

Africa faces a situation of economic water scarcity, and current institutional, financial and human capacities for managing water are inadequate.

Taking advantage of the latest space technology and Earth observation science, the Africa Water Atlas serves to demonstrate the potential of satellite imagery data in monitoring changes in ecosystems and natural resources. This technology can provide the kind of hard, evidence-based data to support political decisions aimed at improving management of Africa's surface basins and aquifer resources.

Notes:

The Africa Water Atlas features over 224 maps and 104 satellite images as well as some 500 graphics and hundreds of compelling photos. The publication makes a major contribution to the state of knowledge about water in Africa by bringing together information about water issues in each country and summarizing the state of their progress towards the MDG water targets, synthesizing water issues by looking at them from the perspective of challenges and opportunities and providing distinctive profiles of transboundary water basins and country.

Individual satellite images and other graphics can be downloaded from

www.na.unep.net/atlas

Egypt asserts right to block upstream Nile dams

by Dina Zayed

Egypt insisted on May 18 it can block dams and other projects upstream on the Nile, challenging a new deal among African nations seeking to alter historic water sharing arrangements and secure more water for farms and growth.

Four African countries signed the agreement in Uganda the week before in a bid to access a greater share of water from the Nile, despite colonial-era pacts that give Egypt the lion's share of the water and allow it to veto upstream projects such as dams.

"Any project that takes away from the river's flow has to be approved by Egypt and Sudan in accordance with international treaties," Egypt's Water Resources and Irrigation Minister Mohamed Nasreddin Allam said.
"Egypt is closely watching energy generation projects in the (Nile) basin," he said.

Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Ethiopia signed the deal on May 14, creating a permanent commission to manage the Nile's waters that did not include Egypt or Sudan. Kenya, Burundi and Democratic Republic of Congo are expected to sign within a year. The new commission would ostensibly have the power to veto energy and irrigation projects in signatory states.

Egypt, almost totally dependent on the Nile and already threatened by climate change, is closely watching hydro-electric dams in East Africa it fears may restrict the river's flow. Egypt has already warned that the new agreement lacked legitimacy and plans to press donors for support.

Yet upstream countries say they need more water too. Power shortages have hindered investment in Africa even though alternative sources to hydroelectric power exist.

The day the pact was signed, Ethiopia inaugurated its Beles Dam, which it says will produce 460 megawatts.

After the inauguration, Egyptian media voiced concern the project could reduce the flow of water to Egypt. Some 85 percent of the Nile's waters originate in Ethiopia.

Allam said Egypt had no objections to dams or other energy projects upstream on the world's longest river as long as the country's share of 55.5 billion cubic metres was not reduced.

Analysts say global donors and banks may be reluctant to finance projects that would harm Egypt's and Sudan's access to water for fear of getting entangled in a regional spat.

Egypt is widely credited with having blocked a loan from the African Development Bank for a dam project in Ethiopia in 1990.

"Most donors see that consensus between Nile Basin countries and the consent of Egypt as key to funding any project," said Gamal Soltan of the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies. "Egypt could work with these international donors."

One state newspaper quoted Egypt's Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif on Tuesday as saying: "Signing a unilateral treaty confirms that the motivation behind it was political, so it shall be dealt will politically."

Ethiopia, which rationed power for five months in 2009, when outages every second day closed factories, hampered exports and fuelled a currency shortage, says a new pact could help boost energy projects and shore up investment.

"Egypt is not trying to undermine development projects ... but it is trying to push for projects that could serve the interests of all those states and Egypt itself," Soltan said.

Reuters

Ten years of talks - and still no resolution to Nile controversy

Contrary to the controversy it has engendered, the Nile river agreement should allow for more equitable water use and minimize potential conflicts between the riparian states, says an analyst.

"The problem with the River Nile is lack of cooperation in water management," Debay Tadesse, senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in Addis Ababa, said. "There is enough [water] for all the riparian states and this agreement opens the way for more equitable management."

The 14 May Nile River Basin Cooperative Framework was signed by Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda, but was left open for a year. It followed a meeting of water ministers in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, where Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda agreed to it.

Egypt and Sudan have rejected it, saying the accord only reflects the views of seven, not nine, states that share the resource. They suggest more talks.

"For Egypt and Sudan, as well as the other eight riparian countries, the question of how much water they can use to irrigate their agricultural land and sustain their growing populations [has] become [an] existential [matter] that dwarf[s] the other political conflicts plaguing the region," Nadia Anne Zahran wrote in The Middle East Channel on 19 May.

On 6 May, the International Crisis Group warned the dispute could polarize the region. It could also harden Egypt’s resolve to maintain the status quo by rallying behind Sudan and against the other countries.

The new agreement, signed in Entebbe, Uganda, after 10 years of talks, also transformed the Nile Basin Initiative into a permanent Nile River Basin Commission and will facilitate its legal recognition in the member countries.

Kenya signed on 19 May. “Nothing now stops us from using the waters as we wish,” Kenya’s Water Minister Charity Ngilu said. “It is now up to Egypt and Sudan to come on board in the spirit of cooperation on the basis of One Nile, One Basin and One Vision. Two states out of nine cannot stop us from implementing this framework.”

For ratification, the agreement now needs to be signed by DRC and Burundi.

"What will underpin the usage of the Nile River resources is equitable and sustainable use in the best interests of all members," a source at the Entebbe talks told IRIN. "The new agreement binds only those members that have signed, which means that unless Egypt and Sudan sign, it does not bind them... [but] the main thrust is to give equal opportunity to all members without anyone claiming 90 percent leverage over the river."

Egypt's current monopoly, he added, was untenable. "This was not acceptable to many members; that is why the new agreement was negotiated," he added. "There is going to be a formula followed while exploiting the river resources. The agreement has not invented anything new, but it codified already existing international law governing waterways."

Egypt has so far stuck to its guns. "Any project that takes away from the river's flow has to be approved by Egypt and Sudan in accordance with international treaties," Reuters quoted Water Resources and Irrigation Minister Mohamed Nasreddin Allam as saying on 18 May. "Egypt is closely watching energy generation projects in the [Nile] basin."

Tadesse said Egypt and Sudan had no option but to negotiate with the other riparian states. "They have one year to decide, but they will have to," he said on 19 May. "They will only be able to monitor what is happening in the Upper Nile riparian states if they sign. Not knowing what is happening in those states would be a threat to Egypt and Sudan. For example, if Ethiopia or Kenya build more dams, Egypt will want to know what is happening."

The Entebbe source said: "Nobody is going to cut off water to countries downstream, but we shall have equal opportunities in its utilization. Disputes will arise and will be resolved through the Nile Basin Commission ... but even when they cannot be resolved at that level, third parties like the International Court of Justice could be resorted to, but I think this will not be necessary."

According to Kithure Kindiki of the School of Law at the University of Nairobi, Kenya, neither the unilateral claims of Egypt on maintaining the status quo on the Nile, nor the threat by upstream states such as Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya to obstruct the Nile-Victoria system are supportable in law.

“The legality of the Nile treaties should be understood from the viewpoint of the principles of international law on state succession as and how that affects treaty obligations,” he noted in a December 2009 paper. “All these treaties, except the 1959 Agreement, were adopted when all co-riparians of the Nile (except Ethiopia) were ruled by foreign colonial powers.”

The paper recommends three approaches to resolving the Nile impasse: the conclusion of the negotiations and adoption of a new treaty binding all riparian states; the promotion of ratification of the 1997 UN Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses; and the referral of the issue of the legality of the Nile treaties to a judicial or arbitration forum.

Uganda's Water Minister Mary Mutagambwa said negotiations were not over. "The agreement will be ratified after members sign it, and it is open for signature for a year," she said. "[It] offers all of us the opportunity to unite and develop. [Egypt and Sudan] do not want interruption of the current usage. It is a matter of convincing them and I hope that within this year we can bring them on board."

The agreement attempts to review two deals signed in 1929 between Egypt and its former colonial power, Britain, and in 1959 with Sudan. The accords give Egypt and Sudan the biggest share of the water, totalling up to 87 percent of Nile flow. Egypt also has the power to veto dams and other water projects in upstream countries. To monitor the water levels, it maintains teams of engineers along the river including at its source in Jinja, and in Malakal in Southern Sudan.

Critics say the agreements are pre-colonial because they were signed before the other riparian states became independent, but Egypt insists they were done to safeguard its interests. "Egypt's historic rights to Nile waters are a matter of life and death. We will not compromise them," Moufid Shehab, Egyptian Minister of Legal and Assembly Affairs, was quoted as telling parliament recently.

In Khartoum, Sudan's legal counsel to Nile Basin Initiative Ahmed Al-Mufti told a news conference on 11 May that his government's position was not to sign the agreement until all the nine states reached a solution to the issues in dispute. This position, observers say, could change if Southern Sudan voted for independence in a 2011 referendum.

The view from Cairo and Khartoum was echoed by Eritrea, which had observer status at the negotiations. In a statement issued by the Eritrean information ministry, President Isaias Afwerki said the upstream states had made "wrong agreements and regulations" on the use of the Nile river. He told Egyptian television that this "not only aggravates the situation but also creates tension”.

Flowing 6,825km from Lake Victoria to the Mediterranean, the Nile is the longest river in the world. It discharges about 300 million cubic metres of water daily and provides Egypt, which receives almost zero rainfall, with about 90 percent of its water needs. Four hundred million people live in the countries that share the river.

Experts say Egypt's population could reach 130 million in 40 years, thereby increasing its demands. On the other hand, Ethiopia wants to build more dams on the Blue Nile, while Sudan has promised foreign farmers vast pieces of land. In Kenya, farmers want to expand irrigation while Uganda is planning dams and Tanzania intends to build a 170km pipeline from Lake Victoria to supply dry areas.

According to the ISS, almost one in two people in Africa will, within 25 years, live in a country facing water scarcity or “water stress” because of rapid population growth and economic development. By 2025, some 12 African countries will have joined the 13 that already suffer from water stress or water scarcity.

"There is a lot at stake for all the players in the region and perhaps for Arab-African relations as a whole, already strained by years of neglect and outright conflict in Sudan," Zahran noted. "As climate change continues to affect an already parched region, reliance on the Nile, which flows through 10 percent of Africa and is shared by 10 countries, is only increasing."

IRIN

Egypt launches diplomatic flurry to contain Nile crisis

Senior Egyptian officials left for Khartoum on May 19 amid a diplomatic flurry that will see several African leaders in Cairo in the coming weeks seeking to contain the region's water-sharing crisis.

Mohammed Nasredine Allam, Egypt's minister for water resources and irrigation, is heading to Sudan for talks on Nile water sharing after five upstream countries signed a deal that Cairo and Khartoum rejected, the official MENA news agency reported.

Allam, accompanied by senior foreign ministry officials, is expected to discuss with his Sudanese counterpart, Kamal Ali, "ways for both countries to maintain their rights (to Nile water) based on international agreements."

Under a 1959 agreement between Egypt and Sudan, they get the lion's share of the water flow.

On May 19, Kenya became the fifth country to sign a new treaty -- after Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda -- for what is claimed to be an equitable sharing of river waters, despite strong opposition from Egypt and Sudan.

Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga was due in Egypt on May 22 for talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif.

On May 29, Congolese President Joseph Kabila is due to visit Egypt and in June Burundi President Pierre Nkurunziza is also expected in Cairo, MENA said.

In June, Egyptian Minister of Agriculture Amin Abaza and Investment Minister Mahmud Mohiedine will head to Ethiopia and Uganda for talks with officials there, MENA said.

Egypt has repeatedly claimed its "historic right" to the Nile water and threatened legal action to preserve its right to the water on which its 80 million people depend.

The upstream countries want to be able to implement irrigation and hydropower projects in consultation with Egypt and Sudan, but without Egypt being able to exercise the veto power it was given by a 1929 colonial-era treaty with Britain.

AFP

East Africa seeks more Nile water from Egypt

Four East African states have signed an agreement to seek more water from the River Nile - a move strongly opposed by Egypt and Sudan.

Under a 1929 accord, some 90% of the river's water is reserved for Egypt. Upstream countries including Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania and Ethiopia say it is unfair and want a new deal but nothing has been agreed in 13 years of talks.

A further three countries were represented at the meeting in Entebbe, Uganda, and may sign up later.

There is a danger that the split could hamper any further efforts for all nine countries involved to negotiate how the waters should be shared.

For Egypt, water is a matter of national security.

"If we don't have an agreed co-operative framework, there will be no peace," Kenya's director of water resources John Nyaro told the BBC before the meeting.
"Where there is no rule of law, the rule of the jungle does not provide peace."

Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda, and Rwanda signed the agreement in Entebbe, which would lead to experts determining how much water each country would be entitled to. Kenya did not sign the agreement as its minister could not attend. Like Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo, it sent officials to Entebbe.

Ethiopia, for example - the source of the Blue Nile - contributes an estimated 85% of the river waters but is able to make relatively little use of its natural resource.

Rwanda's Environment Minister Stanislas Kamanzi said, "Egypt has been requesting to defer the signing of the Cooperative Framework Agreement - we couldn't wait any longer, since we have been negotiating for over 10 years."

Egypt and Sudan say they will not sign a new deal unless they are first guaranteed an exact share of the water.

Ahead of the meeting, Ahmed el-Mufti, the legal counsel for Sudan's delegation, said that all nine countries were close to an agreement, so there was no need for the upstream countries to sign their own deal. He also said Egypt and Sudan needed water more than those in more fertile regions.

"They have a lot of rain: This is nature," he said. "They do not need the water. Here in Sudan we need water."

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit has warned that water rights were a "red line" and threatened legal action if a separate deal is reached. Egypt's farmers are almost wholly dependent on the River Nile and its water.

With populations soaring, demand for water increasing and climate change having an impact, there are warnings that wrangling over the world's longest river could be a trigger for conflict.

BBC

Countries disagree on Nile River water usage

by Dina Zayed

In arid Egypt, officials have long angered fellow Nile Basin countries by clinging to colonial-era water treaties giving it rights to the lion's share of water flowing down the world's longest river. But upstream nations desperate for development are hoping to break with the past, threatening to shut regional heavyweight Egypt out of a new pact and potentially deepening an already bitter struggle for water resources across this parched region.

"This is a crisis in Egypt's relations with Nile Basin countries," said Gamal Soltan, head of the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies. The feud could also upset the balance between poor upstream nations and Egypt, the Arab world's most populous nation, where climate change threatens a fragile farm sector and population growth may outstrip water resources as early as 2017.

The latest chapter in the long-running feud over waters from the Nile, worshipped as a deity in ancient Egypt, came when upstream countries declared after a water meeting in Sharm El-Sheikh this month that they would launch separate talks since Egypt and Sudan refused to revise water pacts dating to 1929.

"Egypt's historic rights to Nile waters are a matter of life and death. We will not compromise them," Moufid Shehab, minister of legal and assembly affairs, told parliament after the talks. The 1929 deal, brokered on one side by British colonial powers in Africa, gives Egypt 55.5 billion cubic metres a year, the biggest share of a flow of some 84 billion cubic meters. It also gives Cairo the power to veto dams and other water projects in upstream countries that include six of the world's poorest nations.

"We will not sign on to any agreement that does not clearly state and acknowledge our historical rights," Egyptian Water Minister Mohamed Nasreddin Allam said after the meeting.

But analysts say Egypt, eager to style itself as a leader of both Arab and African nations to enhance its global clout, must improve ties with upstream countries that in the future may take on greater economic and commercial importance.

"Egypt has tried in the past to complicate the issue ... They are dragging their heels," Shimeles Kemal, spokesman for the government of Ethiopia, source of the Blue Nile. Egypt and Sudan "are pushing for a position that would negate everything we've achieved in years of talks and negotiations", said Isaac Musumba, Uganda's state minister for regional cooperation.

Upstream states have invited Egypt and Sudan to take part in the new deal -- whose legal standing would be uncertain -- but on their terms. "We hope to convince them," said Christopher Chiza, Tanzania's deputy minister of water and irrigation.

Talk of such a deal triggers alarm in Egypt, where Nile waters feed a farm sector accounting for a third of all jobs. Egypt, unlike upstream nations, cannot rely on rain and gets 87 percent of its water needs from the Nile. Climate change and rising sea levels could also swallow much of the slim, fertile Nile Delta in Egypt, already the world's largest wheat importer, and cost it $35 billion this century, the United Nations has estimated.

Large-scale projects reclaiming arid land or building dams in upstream nations could further strain water use in Egypt, while increased upstream farming could bring more pollution. But even if upstream countries ink the new deal, which could take place as early as May 14, they may not have the financial muscle in the near term to build dams and other projects that would allow them to siphon more water from the Nile.

"Practically, even if those countries sign a framework agreement without Egypt, its effects won't be lasting ... how are (upstream countries) going to stop the flow of water?" said Safwat Abdel-Dayem, secretary general of the Arab Water Council. "It's premature to say they will build dams so we will lose water and (Egyptian) agriculture will be slashed," he said.

Globals donors and banks could be unlikely, for one, to provide the finance needed to build upstream water projects for fear of getting tangled in a regional diplomatic spat. Analysts say a new treaty could nonetheless boost investments in African nations' land reclamation projects, and help attract foreign investment in upstream farmland.

"It would seem that a new deal, provided it covers an extended period and is enforceable, could be good for potential investors," said Aziza Akhmouch, an analyst with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. "It would reduce current uncertainty about the future availability of water."

The conflict threatens to further dilute the sway of Egypt, perched at the nexus of Arab and African worlds, in the region. "Egypt has lost a great deal of its influence in Africa, and has run (through) a lot of its cards," said Sharif ElMusa, a water politics expert at the American University in Cairo. Egypt should not seek to stick to historic water treaties, it should focus on bilateral talks with each country or take its case to an international arbitrator, Soltan said.

"We need more holistic policies including other policy areas branching into economic, cultural, and political ties," echoed Osama Ghazali Harb, head of a liberal opposition party.

The government may be taking heed. It has pledged doubling funds for development projects with upstream nations. It is also trying to enforce better management at home. Egypt has cut back on water-intensive crops like rice, a key export, but could see a 47 percent drop in maize output.

Experts say Egypt is not moving fast enough to cut its dependence on the Nile or shift the diplomatic focus from divvying up water to how to better use it across borders.

Reuters