Conflicts around the River Nile - a future prognosis?

 This short entry will be about the recent events surrounding the river Nile and their impacts on food and water management in the affected countries.

There are ten riparian states of the Nile, which at 6650 km is the longest river on earth. Every country depends on the water flow of the river in different ways. Since Egypt and Sudan receive lower rainfalls than Upper Nile Basin countries, they depend on the water supply of the river Nile (see the map below). Added to that, Egypt is already facing a water deficit of 7 billion cubic meters every year. 

Nile River Basin: Distribution and dependence (Source)

Conflicts arose when Ethiopia started building the Great Renaissance Dam in 2010 to provide enough energy for their growing population. It is the largest and most expensive hydroelectric dam in Africa. The filling of the dam could reduce water supplies to downstream Egypt by more than one-third. As a result, Egypt could lose 72% of their agricultural land, followed by economic losses to agriculture of 51 billion $. Negotiations between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan have failed many times. Ethiopia keeps denying the negative impacts of the dam, but especially Egypt fears them. Legally, there are contracts for water rights on the Nile, but these date back to colonial times. Ethiopia therefore refuses to recognize the treaty’s validity, especially since those treaties are depriving Ethiopian water rights.

So what happened in the end? Ethiopia completed the second filling of the dam in 2021 without the agreement of Sudan and Egypt, the political conflicts became more severe and solutions were limited. Egypt has to retrieve their water in other ways. “Adjusting operations at the Aswan Dam downstream in southern Egypt, pumping more groundwater, cultivating different kinds of crops and improving irrigation systems” could be a solution for some time, but the problem is far from being solved.

This example shows how climate change (leading to water scarcity) and the growing world population (bringing higher demand for resources and electricity) are likely to cause many conflicts concerning water management in the future.