By Tesfa-Alem Tekle
ADDIS ABABA — Ethiopia, being the source of 85 percent of the total Nile waters flow, claims that it could self-support its hungry people off foreign food aid if granted to irrigate from the Blue Nile river.
However, a 1929 treaty between Egypt and Britain, the then regional power, awarded most of the Nile’s water to Egypt. Veto power over upstream projects as well.
Despite the fact that Ethiopia generates the lions share to the river, the horn of Africa’s nation uses only less than 1 percent of it because Egypt resists any attempt from Ethiopia to launch any large scale irrigation project and warns that any attempt to adjust the river’s status would be regarded as an act of war.
With devastating drought year-to- year endangering the lives of millions of people in Ethiopia and in the East of African region in general, Ethiopians now strongly argue that it is time that the ’ancient’ treaty must be reviewed.
Binyam Tekle is an Architect and an Environmentalist at a University and a research institute in Ethiopia. He argues that Egypt is a hidden factor to food crises in the east African region.
“Why do we always blame rain short or aid short to food crises in Ethiopia, while next door we have a major contributor to food shortage in Ethiopia-Egypt?” Binyam told Sudan Tribune.
“Unless the old, unfair treaty is soon reviewed by the international community and Egypt accepts to loosen its current rigid stand, once off hand the strain could lead to wrong but dangerous direction,” he added.
In recent years failing rains have constantly made crops in Ethiopia impossible to grow as much as the country needs to outreach the increased food need of its 80 million people, Africa’s second most populous country.
“People in some East African countries entirely depend on Nile water for their annual supply to agriculture when rainfalls luck, so increasing water demand could lead to political tensions in the entire region, unless new compromise is reached for fair distribution” said researcher Endashaw Belay.
“To realize a peace full united Africa, countries must be able to jointly work together to solve own problems and in this case Nile states must have political will to reach comprehensive consensuses despite what past treaties.”
Many analysts say that Egypt is blocking any funds to Ethiopia’s Nile project. Though Ethiopians might be tempted to circumvent the anachronistic arrangement, they can’t. Egyptian officials work behind “closed doors” to block funding for upstream projects, according to David Shinn, former US ambassador to Ethiopia.
Nile states have sought to re-negotiate the old treaty but Egyptian officials have stalled it for years. (Source: Sudan Tribune)
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We all know that we are not using the Nile water as much as we should. You claim that it is because of Egypt. I disagree with you for the following reason. it is the usual blame game of our government just not to take responsibility for the current situation. I remember that Meles were saying “Famine” will be history in Ethiopia in a couple of years. Well it is almost two decades since he is in power and now when he failed to achieve that you started to blame Egypt, etc. I tell you it is a very good technique to divert peoples’ attention but I guarantee you it doesn’t help to solve our problem.
Let us face it our problems are many but some of the main are the following: 1) Our government has failed to prepare a comprehensive long term plan to solve critical problems of the country. I prepare a new policy and it almost never works for more than a year. You can see this on education, agriculture, etc. I remember one summer (for two months) Tefera and Meles were talking about a new policy to fight “Musena” and other things. For this policy the government spent like 300 million birr and after three months of practice they said it failed.
2) Our people are really lazy. Go to every institute in Ethiopia and look at what people do. They spent most of their time complaining and gossiping. They almost have no respect for their job. Go to the so called “Kebeles” the thing that shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes will take you days or week to finish. You really have to be lucky to find the people in charge of the work in their office. Off course, the common reason is they are on a meeting.
3) We should control our population growth. What ever we do if our population continuous to grow with the current trend, it is unlikely to imagine that a better days are a head. Any economic growth will simply be over shadowed by the population growth. I believe the government should first teach family planning and finally make a restriction on how many children one family can maximum have with serious penalty for those who refuse to obey the law.
October 23rd, 2009 at 2:27 pm
Why does Egypt feel that the United Kingdom which signed the Treaty in 1929 is our overseer? Doesn’t Egypt recognize that Ethiopia is a sovereign State? Egypt should abandon the old Colonial state of mind and start to negotiate in good faith with Ethiopia and the other countries in which the Nile flows. The UK is not a colonial power any more and every nation needs to protect its own interest too. About time Egypt woke up in the 21st Century!
October 31st, 2009 at 10:42 pm