New Nile pact puts Kenya-Egypt ties to test

Kenya’s frosty trade relations with Egypt could come under renewed pressure after the government joined other East African states in endorsing a new water pact that the Arab nation has rejected.

Water minister Charity Ngilu on Wednesday appended her signature to the Nile Basin Co-operative Framework Agreement (CFA), making Kenya the fifth country to officially endorse the new legal framework that aims to redistribute water equitably among the nine riparian states.

Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania and Ethiopia have already signed the CFA, which Burundi and DRC are expected to sign before the end of the month, ending decades of Egypt’s stranglehold on the Nile waters.

The agreement will test the application and legality of both the 1929 and the 1959 Nile Treaty signed between Sudan, Egypt and the British government – the latter signing on behalf of the colonies it administered in East Africa.

Egypt and Sudan are opposed to the new agreement, based on the Nile Basin Initiative of 1999 that seeks to create an intergovernmental Permanent Commission to manage the Nile waters.

The permanent commission has powers to vet and approve hydro power and irrigation projects in signatory states situated upstream.

“It has been a long journey of up to 10 years of negotiations, but we had to safeguard utilisation of Lake Victoria waters and rivers feeding into it because they are indispensable for our country,” Mrs Ngilu said.

Under the 1929 and 1959 treaties, Egypt enjoyed an exclusive right to veto any large scale project in Nile basin.

Kenya has rejected the old agreement saying her rivers contribute 11 billion cubic metres out of the 90 billion cubic metres that Lake Victoria discharges to the River Nile annually.

The lake contributes 15 per cent of the Nile waters while the rest comes from Ethiopian highlands.

The move by Kenya to endorse the treaty came just one day after Egypt said it would block its implementation by the upstream states and could open a diplomatic war between the Nile basin states and Egypt.

A section of international press quoted Egypt’s Water Resources and Irrigation Minister Mohamed Nasreddin Allam as saying that any project that relies on the river’s flow will only be recognised if approved by Egypt and Sudan “in accordance with international treaties.”

Sudan, which initially rejected the 1929 treaty that gave Egypt sole control of Nile waters has since softened its stand to become Cairo’s key ally.

The 1959 Agreement was between Egypt and Sudan in which Khartoum got political recognition and a substantial portion of the Nile waters which it later donated to Egypt.