http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke
By CHRISTINE MUNGAI and CHARLES ONYANGO-OBBO
22/06/2013
Inset: DR Congo's President Joseph Kabila. Irrespective of how much the EAC will have evolved, when DR Congo comes into play, the regional economic map will still be shaped by what’s happening on the banks of River Congo and in the DR Congo’s mines.
IN SUMMARY - In this three-part special report, The EastAfrican explores three possible ways in which these “economic magnetic pulls” could determine the region’s economic and political architecture.
- Will the driving engine be westward, where the fabulous riches of the DR Congo remain largely untapped?
Or will it be eastward, over the ocean, where India and China are roaring ahead, and looking to use the East African coast as a beachhead on the continent?
Or will the pull be northward, with Ethiopia, rather than Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, or DR Congo becoming the heart of the region’s economy?
At first it might not look like it, but the exchanges between Egypt and Ethiopia over the latter’s Renaissance Dam that the region witnessed these past two weeks, tell us a lot about the tensions defining what the East African Community will look like in the years to come.
The dam on the River Nile, which Addis Ababa projects will cost $4.7 billion, will produce 6,000 Megawatts of power when fully developed, making it the largest hydroelectric power plant in Africa, and the 14th largest in the world.
Egypt, which has in the past threatened to go to war over its “rights” to the Nile’s waters, issued a stern warning.
ALSO READ: Egypt, Sudan clash over use of Nile waters
Egypt’s Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation Mohamed Bahaa-Eddin, arguing that the intended dam would divert 74 billion cubic metres of Nile water stored behind Egypt’s Aswan High Dam, said, “We are living in an era of water shortage and we will not allow any reduction of Egypt’s share of the Nile water (which is 55.5 billion cubic metres),” he said.
“Life in Egypt depends on the Nile, water is a national security matter for us and we will never relent on this issue.”
Last week, Egypt’s President Mohamed Morsy said he did not want war but would not allow Egypt’s water supply to be endangered. He said that he was keeping “all options open.”
“As president of the republic, I confirm to you that all options are open,” he said on Monday. “If Egypt is the Nile’s gift, then the Nile is a gift to Egypt… If it diminishes by one drop, then our blood is the alternative.”
Ethiopia, as stubborn a country as there can ever be, responded in kind to Morsi three days later. Its parliament unanimously endorsed the new Nile River Co-operative Framework Agreement, an accord already signed by five other Nile-Basin countries — Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya and Burundi.
With that, it effectively replaced the 1929 treaty between Britain and Egypt that gave Cairo veto power over any project involving the Nile by upstream countries and gave it and Sudan the lion’s share of the river’s waters.
On the same day, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni backed Ethiopia, and said Egypt should stop trying to block sub-Saharan countries from exploiting the Nile waters.
This week, Egypt stopped the sabre-rattling and took the diplomatic road, sending Foreign Affairs Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr to Addis Ababa for talks that, both sides said, were “productive.”
These tensions over the River Nile, however, are just a small part of bigger forces pushing and pulling to determine the economic and political shape of not just East Africa and the Horn, but also Central and Southern Africa.
This was not temporary insanity on Egypt’s part. The Nile is critical for Egypt because it actually lives and dies by it. It is the country’s sole source of fresh water, and it would be imperilled, given its population of 83 million (which continues to grow), if the amount of Nile water it receives dropped off considerably.
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