EAC l - Involvement in the Nile Basin

EAC Part One

In my last blog post I spoke about South Sudan’s water crisis and the country’s position within the Nile Basin, which I will build on with my following two posts by going further upstream the White Nile to Lake Victoria. As I mentioned in the South Sudan case study, the White Nile only contributes about 28% of the total Nile flow, but due to the high variance in flow from the Blue Nile and seasonal variability, the White Nile can at times make up to 80% of the total flow of the lower Nile river (Sida, 2004). In this post I will evaluate the role of the EAC in the Nile Basin and look at how the treaties have shaped the presence of EAC member states in the conversation over the Nile waters.
The EAC is an intergovernmental body serving the purpose of peaceful cooperation in economic and political realm of the member states (EAC, 2017). There were three treaties over the course of the past century, each between different riparian states; 1929, 1959 and 2002. They attempt to give governance structures a framework by which the allocation of the common resource is managed and constitute a highly complex system of regulations. Despite the treaties bringing some guidance to and regulation of the usage of the Nile, the legitimacy of these treaties is highly contested by the riparian states (Kagwanja, 2007), as these were signed  by the colonial powers at the time. Kenya rejected the 1929 Treaty in 2003 for example, and this violation of the Nile Basin Treaty was registered as an act of war by Egypt. The Treaty’s legitimacy was further rebelled against by Tanzania in 2004, when a $27.6 million project was started to extract water from Lake Victoria (The EastAfrican, 2004). The Nile Treaty from 1929 fails to give permission to the EAC riparian states to access their territorial water from the Nile. This has not been directly associated with the prevention of construction or development of water structures in EAC, but rather the low economic activity in these regions. After a period of mismanagement and lack of constructive cooperation during the late 1980s and early 1990s, there were heightened tensions between interregional and international relationships of EAC member states (Kagwanja, 2007). After political relations had worsened, the EAC was negotiated in 1990, which contributed to the rebuilding of cooperation, policy and harmonic conversation between the countries.
This has been the first successful attempt at managing and bringing together the stakeholders and riparian states in a peaceful cooperative manner to develop the framework around the shared resource. The rather ambiguous relationship between Egypt and the EAC member states in the Treaty of 1929 has been clarified through the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) (World Bank Group, 2009), however due to various reasons ranging from cultural friction to local level governance tensions, this initiative has not fully succeeded. To promote cooperation between these states, the “Protocol for Sustainable Development of Lake Victoria Basin” was implemented (Adar, 2011), targeting governmental as well local municipal frameworks in the EAC states. In spite of the united standpoint this will give EAC states in the negotiations and ongoing political debates in the wider NBI negotiations, it may raise conflict on a new dimension. Historically, there has been a religious and ethnic divide (Sida, 2004) between the countries in the Arab North, which is primarily Islamic, and the Southern African Christian states. On the basis of this signed contract, the current fragile relations may be shattered as a direct consequence of this association. With these problematic conflict arrangements in mind it is vital for the riparian states, regardless of their geographic location, and the affiliations to build on their cooperation and increase conversation. With the renewed initiative in place, regional municipalities now have an elevated platform to voice their concerns, promoting regional integration and a multilateral approach. In addition to regionalism, the conversation between environmentalists and the state has to be amplified in order to implement policies around equitable water management.

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