Double-Edged Hydropolitics on the Nile - Center for Security Studies ...

<strong>Double</strong>-<strong>Edged</strong> <strong>Hydropolitics</strong> on the Nile
Data sharing
Basin wide river
development
Century Storage
Scheme Plan
Legal and institutional
agreements
1929 Agreement
1959 Agreement
Hydromet
UNDUGU
TECCONILE
Shared Vision Program
Nile Basin Initiative
ENSAP/NELSAP
D3 Project
Figure 2.3: Advances on different tracks towards bilateral or multilateral cooperation in the Nile Basin
No definite breakthrough has so far been achieved in the legal and institutional
framework negotiations with regard to the status of earlier agreements
and the operationalization of ‘water security’ for the basin states.
Progress with regard to the joint implementation of river development
strategies hinges to some extent on the signing of the legal and institutional
framework agreement, as the support of donor agencies is coupled to advances
on the legal track. The infrastructure projects planned in the Eastern
Nile Subsidiary Action Program (ENSAP), for instance, took longer than
planned to move from planning to implementation. At present, the focus
of the ENSAP lies on irrigation development projects in each country, the
Ethiopia-Sudan electricity interconnection, and a watershed management
component (ENSAP 2007).
In addition to the projects designed under the NBI, the Eastern Nile states
also implement new infrastructure projects independently, e.g., the South
Valley (Toshka) land reclamation project in Egypt, the Merowe Dam project
in the Sudan, and the Tekeze Dam project in Ethiopia. Unilaterally or
cooperatively, the Nile states are determined to put their river to greater
70