Land and Hydropolitics in the Nile River Basin

Challenges and new investments

Emil Sandstrom, Anders Jagerskog, Terje Oestigaard

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781317414346
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Ecología

The Nile River Basin supports the livelihoods of millions of people in Egypt, Ethiopia, Sudan and Uganda, principally as water for agriculture and hydropower. The resource is the focus of much contested development, not only between upstream and downstream neighbours, but also from countries outside the region. This book investigates the water, land and energy nexus in the Nile Basin.

It explains how the current surge in land and energy investments, both by foreign actors as well as domestic investors, affects already strained transboundary relations in the region and how investments are intertwined within wider contexts of Nile Basin history, politics and economy. Overall, the book presents a range of perspectives, drawing on political science, international relations theory, sociology, history and political ecology.

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Changing challenges

New hydropolitical landscapes in the Nile Basin

Emil Sandström, Anders Jägerskog¹ and Terje Oestigaard

Buy land, they’re not making it anymore.
(Mark Twain)

The political hydro-geography of the Nile

Land and hydropolitics in the Nile River Basin are intimately interwoven and new water-related investments in agriculture and hydropower pose increasing challenges and changing hydropolitical landscapes. Not only are the physical landscapes of the Nile changing, but so are the political landscapes. Studies of Nile Basin hydropolitics have been a reoccurring theme in academic studies over the years (see, e.g., Cascão, 2012; Tvedt, 2004, 2010a; Waterbury, 2002; Whittington et al., 2005). The relations between the riparian countries in the basin are complex given the hydrological nature of the basin, varying hydroclimates in different parts of the region and high variation in levels of development in the region.

This book analyses yet another layer that further contributes to the hydropolitical complexity of the basin – namely, the current surge in land and energy investments. There have been widely differing estimates of the scale of which farmland and water-related investment are being acquired, but suffice to say that the Nile Basin has not seen cross-border land acquisitions and water-related investments on this scale before. Parallel to these events a number of countries in the Nile Basin have also undergone several profound political changes, with transboundary implications. With this background, the contributors in this book analyse the changing transboundary water relations in the region in the context of increasing investments in energy and agriculture and discuss this from a range of perspectives.² The various chapters address how the recent surge of land- and water-related investments affect the transboundary water relations in one of the largest and most challenging river basins in the world, where contemporary developments, in particular in the Eastern Nile region, have played a pivotal role for reshaping the hydropolitical landscapes of the Nile Basin. Together, the chapters in this book provide new insights into a number of key aspects and events relating to both past and present land and energy investments and discuss how they are intertwined in different hydropolitical and development trajectories in the Nile Basin.

The Nile River is regarded as the longest river in the world and the water catchment area (basin) comprises about 10 per cent of the total land area of Africa (about 3,173,000 square kilometres). The Nile Basin is shared by 11 states – Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda – that together inhabit about 437 million people, out of which 238 million live within the basin (NBI, 2013). The population in the 11 countries is expected to grow rapidly and reach about 591 million in 2025 and 861 million by 2050 according to UN projections (UN, 2009) of which approximately 54 per cent will live in the basin itself being dependent upon the Nile waters. The population growth is expected to put increasing pressure on water resources for food and development in all basin countries. According to Salman (2011), who draws on Waterbury (2002), the stakes and interests of Egypt, Sudan, South Sudan and Ethiopia are classified as very high; those of Uganda as high; those of Burundi, Rwanda, Kenya and Tanzania as moderate; and those of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Eritrea as low.

The Nile is the lifeline of Egypt, but also crucial to the development of Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan and Uganda, although in different ways. In Egypt, the Nile is not only the main source of prosperity, but also her very existence depends on the Nile. Of its two main sources, the Blue Nile flows from Lake Tana in Ethiopia, while the White Nile flows from Lake Victoria in Uganda. About 85 per cent of the water in the Nile originates from the Ethiopian tributaries while the remainder comes from the White Nile (Waterbury, 2002).

The free flow of the Nile has historically been a national security issue for Egypt and the country has held on to the colonial water agreement from 1929³ and the later 1959 agreement, which provides Egypt with the lion’s share of the water. The 1959 agreement between Sudan and Egypt established the average annual flow of the Nile to 84bcm (billion cubic metres) of which Egypt’s share is 55.5bcm, Sudan 18.5bcm and the remaining 10bcm represent the evaporation losses from the Aswan High Dam reservoir at Lake Nasser (Waterbury, 2002). Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya, on the other hand, held on to the Nyerere Doctrine,⁴ and they have argued that the agreements from 1929 and 1959 were signed when most of the upstream countries were colonies and therefore those treaties should not be binding. Ethiopia, being independent when the agreements were signed, argues that they were not even consulted and therefore regards the water agreements as non-binding.

In 1999, the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) was established among the then ten Nile countries (South Sudan became independent on 9 July 2011), with Eritrea having observer status. After a decade, the Cooperative Framework Agreement (CFA) was signed in 2010 by five of the riparian countries (Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya), with Burundi following suit in 2011. According to the agreement, ‘Nile Basin States shall in their respective territories utilize the water resources of the Nile River system and the Nile River Basin in an equitable and reasonable manner’. One major challenge with this agreement is that the whole agrarian and irrigation question is not discussed, which is the largest water consumer. Egypt and Sudan have opposed the agreement.

Egypt’s strategy has essentially been to prevent the emergence of any states that could challenge its domination over the Nile water, and to obstruct any development along the banks of the Nile that could either redirect the flow of the water or reduce its volume (Kendie, 1999; Muhammad, 2010). This strategy has historically been secured by military means and threats, but also through influence in international institutions. For example, Egypt has on several occasions been accused of supporting Eritrea and Somalia in the wars against Ethiopia (Kendie, 1999; Muhammad, 2010) and political leaders from Egypt have threatened to go to war if the free flow of the Nile was perceived to be in danger.

In the media the Middle East and, in particular, the Nile Basin have often been portrayed as the most likely hot-spots where ‘water-wars’ may erupt. As the late President Sadat stated: ‘Any action that would endanger the waters of the Blue Nile will be faced with a firm reaction on the part of Egypt, even if that action should lead to war’ (cited in Kendie, 1999). Similar statements have been delivered by the former presidents Hosni Mubarak and Mohammad Morsi.

The security of the Nile has been central in Egyptian military planning. There can be no doubt that Egypt has the military muscle to go to war against other Nile Basin states. As an example, Egypt’s military expenditure in 2005 was more than twice the equivalent expenditure of all the ten other riparian states together (Adar, 2011: 183). Whether water wars will occur is, however, another question. Water-related conflicts may cause conflicts within states rather than between states and conflict and cooperation may exist simultaneously at different levels at a given time (Zeitoun and Mirumachi, 2008). Thus, Egypt traditionally has been seen as the hegemon in the basin due to its ideational, military and economic domination, despite having the disadvantaged downstream position (Cascão and Zeitoun, 2010).

Analytical and conceptual perspectives

The various chapters have not used a common analytical framework for analysis and there is variation between the chapters, with some being more theoretical and others more empirical and case-study oriented, thus providing different perspectives. The hydropolitical landscapes of the Nile Basin are not confined to the basin’s borders and as many of the chapters in this book show, the hydropolitical landscapes of the Nile are in fact comprised by several ‘landscapes’ that are influenced, as in the past, by actors and factors far away from the Nile Basin itself. Several contributions underscore the complexity and the ‘messiness’ of hydropolitics, and take their point of departure in understanding the hydropolitics of the River Nile as manifestations of negotiated social practices located both locally and globally and within wider contexts of history, politics and economy. Framing the analysis in this way makes it possible to elucidate how, for instance, various political, economic and legal conflicts intertwine and how relations within and between the riparian states of the Nile River Basin have developed over time. In such contexts political and cultural symbols of identity, power and nationalism are often brought into play in shaping the outcomes of the resource system.

Several chapters combine both historical and contemporary perspectives and some chapters take the Nile Basin, part of the basin or a country in the basin as a point of departure for the analysis, whereas others put more emphasis on how the Nile Basin hydropolitics are related to developments ‘outside’ the Nile Basin geography. The book also analyses the land- and water-related investments, both from the perspective of the investor as well as the investee, and highlights the power struggles between and within the riparian states of the River Nile Basin. With regards to the latter aspect, the very terminology used in discourses – by activists, academics, investors and politicians – also reflect and are part of wider geo-political landscapes, with subsequent implications to ongoing land- and water-related processes.

As indicated, Mark Twain once said: ‘Buy land, they’re not making it anymore’, and private individuals, business enterprises and governmental agencies seem to follow this advice and, if impossible to buy, then hiring or leasing is the second best option. The complexity on the ground is, however, challenging simple conceptualizations of these processes. ‘Investment’ or ‘acquisition’ is the preferred term for investors, entrepreneurs and even facilitating governments since it alludes to positive development, whereas the terms ‘land grab’ and ‘water grab’ allude to the negative consequences. Although the terms are often used interchangeably in the literature, the two notions are still different. Not all land deals are investments in a strict sense and not all agricultural investments involves land deals (Cotula, 2013: 7) and, as Cotula says, ‘the polarized debates about the land rush ultimately reflect competing visions about the future of world agriculture, and particularly about the roles of small- and large-scale farming’ (Cotula, 2013: 5).

From the perspective of the people affected, ‘[l]and grabbing (and associated other forms of grabbing) constitutes a recent intensification of an historic threat to rural livelihoods, to democratic governance and equity, and to long-term environmental sustainability’ (Edelman et al., 2013: 1529). Elaborating along these lines, Borras and Franco (2013) argue that ‘land grabbing’ means ‘the capturing of control of relatively vast tracts of land and other natural resources through a variety of mechanisms and forms, carried out through extra-economic coercion that involves large-scale capital’.

Even though the term ‘land grabbing’ carries a lot of baggage and remains problematic, in our view it still has the advantage of 1) focusing attention on the core issues of politics and power relations; and 2) underscoring the dimension of extra-economic coercion involved in land deals.

(Borras and Franco, 2013: 1725)

This also relates to tenure systems and customary rights, and few places in the world are these institutions and traditions as complex and fundamental as in Africa. On the one hand, the term ‘land grab’ may in many cases be the most appropriate, since many investments or deals may cause conflicts when people are resettled, land titles are lost and resources and livelihoods changing for the worse. On the other, in many cases the ultimate ownership of land and water is within the state, and strictly speaking a state cannot ‘grab’ anything it owns in the first place, but it may distribute the resources disproportionally or exclusively.

In this volume, different chapter contributions use different terminologies in their analyses, and no coherency has been sought since, on the one hand, there are various processes involved and described, and, on the other, the terminology depends on perspectives and different emphases by the various actors involved.

Nile geo-politics in a historic perspective

While this book has a contemporary emphasis, today’s politics are also trajectories of the past, shaping future policies, and today’s shifts in geo-politics can best be understood in a broader historic context where building dams and large-scale agricultural investments also played a crucial role, then as today. Many of the ongoing developments along the Nile were, in fact, first proposed by the British more than 100 years ago but, for economic, historic and political reasons were never implemented. A brief historic analysis may also highlight the contemporary complexity where several of the new water-related investments are positioned. In order to understand the background to the 1929 and 1959 agreements, and consequently the disagreements about the CFA, one has to turn to the colonial era. Terje Tvedt says, because ‘in the Nile basin the past is in the present and the present in the past … nobody can escape the impact of the Nile’s power and its history’ (Tvedt, 2004: 326).

In The River Nile in the Age of the British: Political Ecology and the Quest for Economic Power (2004), Tvedt analyses in detail how the British imperial policies in the Nile had one overall aim of securing British interests. Britain took control of Egypt in 1882. Small amounts of cotton produced in the delta were sold into a growing world market from the 1820s but, from the 1860s cotton exports made up about 80 per cent of Egypt’s exports. British industry had a great economic interest in Egypt. The Lancashire textile industry aimed to reduce its dependence on American cotton and increase its supply of cheaper Egyptian cotton. To increase productivity and, hence, profits, more Nile water was needed at the right time (the summer season in Egypt) prior to the annual Blue Nile floods, and therefore cotton production was dependent on the waters of the White Nile. The overriding question was how to secure enough water for cotton production and at the same time control potentially devastating floods (Tvedt, 2004: 20–22). Thus, by the end of the nineteenth century, ‘increased and improved water control was destined to top the agenda of any administration in Egypt’ (Tvedt, 2004: 22). The British were the first who truly saw and tried to exploit this connection and the colonialization in this part of Africa; present-day hydropolitics cannot be understood properly without a water perspective emphasizing the Nile as a river system.

The then Egyptian Prime Minister Nubar Pasha (1884–1888 and 1894–1895) summarized Egypt’s situation and position in a famous one-liner: ‘The Egyptian question is the irrigation question’ (op. cit. Tvedt, 2011: 176), which captures the same essence and importance of the Nile as Herodotus said when he proclaimed that ‘Egypt is the gift of the Nile’. The later Lord Lugar, who became the British ruler of Uganda, wrote in the early 1890s: ‘Egypt is indebted for her summer supply of water to the Victoria lake, and a dam built across the river at its outlet from the lake would deprive Egypt of this’, and emphasized that the ‘occupation of so distant a point as Uganda would be a fair and just claim to render valid our influence in the Nile basin and beyond’ (op. cit. Tvedt, 2011: 187).

British banks also had a strong interest in the Egyptian economy. In 1882, Egypt’s foreign debt had increased to UK£100 million with an annual debt amounting to UK£5 million, of which a large part went to Britain. The ‘Nile water awareness’ in London was so great that The Times reported regularly on the Nile’s water discharges (Tvedt, 2011: 177). The British administration under Lord Cromer understood these links from the very outset and British policy was structured around the Nile. In his imperial strategy, Cromer wrote: ‘When, eventually, the waters of the Nile, from the Lakes to the sea, are brought fully under control, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• List of contributors
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Changing challenges: new hydropolitical landscapes in the Nile Basin
• 2 Dealing with water: emerging land investments and the hydropolitical landscape of the Nile Basin
• 3 Overseas investment in land and challenges in the Nile Basin: evident links from the Middle East and North Africa investment
• 4 The Gulf states in the political economy of the Nile Basin: a historical overview
• 5 Inward investment in Sudan: the case of Qatar
• 6 Sudan, ‘kingmaker’ in a new Nile hydropolitics: negotiating water and hydraulic infrastructure to expand large-scale irrigation
• 7 Transboundary water resources and the political economy of large-scale land investments in the Nile: Sudan, hydropolitics and Arab food security
• 8 Dams, water and accountability in Uganda
• 9 ‘Lease the land, but use the water’: the case of Gambella, Ethiopia
• 10 Lake Tana: source of disputes or collaboration over the Blue Nile?
• 11 Water, national identities and hydropolitics in Egypt and Ethiopia
• Index