Don’t underestimate any country in scramble for waters of the Nile
All the countries that can defuse the simmering conflict in the Horn of Africa in December, when the African Transitional Force mission in Somalia ends, are in the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI).
I like the term “derriere” borrowed from the French. It is the most pleasant and dignified (actually flattering) way I know of to refer to the human bottom, or whatever you call it depending on your upbringing and socialisation.
You can inoffensively refer to your mother-in-law’s derriere in her hearing; I don’t know which other word you can do that without coming off as a despicable character.
Different cultures have their version of a parable that illustrates the importance of the different parts of a system, and the African ones I have heard refer to the derriere that was being despised due to the nature if its job.
So, when a time came to pick the leader of all organs, the likes of the head, heart, tongue, hands and even feet were among the top contenders, but poor Derriere could not feature however long the list was stretched.
When she tried to seek nomination for the election all the organs laughed and ignored her. So, Derriere decided to go on strike and soon enough the body started ailing as it poisoned itself and was about to die when the other organs came to their senses and begged her to call off the strike. They begged her to become their leader, and she finally accepted, just in time to save their life.
How nice it would be as leaders of the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) comprising Burundi, DR Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda meet in Entebbe this week, for someone to re-tell them this parable at the start or during tea break! For NBI, is for peaceful and mutually beneficial utilisation of the Nile, shouldn’t allow any member country to regard another as the derriere of the Nile ecosystem.
In any case, the derriere is as important as the others constituent parts of a systemic organism. NBI should primarily rely more on scientific than political considerations which tend to narrowly categorise members as upstream (water contributors) vs downstream (water users).
All members are users and even the downstream-most member can erect a construction that would cause destructive flooding upstream.
The openly voiced fear today is that downstream Egypt can deploy militarily to mess up upstream Ethiopia by setting-up non-member Somalia as a potential battleground in the process.
On the other hand, the NBI situation today provides Africa with an opportunity to show better rationality than Europe, which is now embroiled in a full-scale war that is massively wasting human lives over political so-called strategic interests.
All countries that can defuse the simmering conflict in the Horn of Africa come the December when the African transitional force deployment in Somalia ends are sitting in NBI. If they don’t move to stop the escalating tension in the Horn, they will have let down Africa.
On the other hand, NBI can be the force of development that it was intended to be, by swiftly defusing the Egypt-Ethiopia tension and going ahead to think more scientifically.
The continent needed to start making the Nile Basin navigable from the south of Lake Victoria all the way to the Mediterranean Sea by yesterday. This would create one of the world’s most important (and cheapest) trade routes.
NBI should leverage the huge power generation capacity along the Nile in Ethiopia and Uganda with the industrial advancement of Egypt to hasten economic development in the Basin.
With the UN conference of parties on climate coming up next month, NBI should be able to report big plans to clean cut emissions by electrifying transport in the interior citing existing projects like the 753kms Addis-Djibouti e-railway, the Addis light commuter rail, Uganda’s brand-new electric vehicles plant, and Tanzania’s steadily growing railway system electrification.
Governments tend to lag behind the people in promoting trade and cooperation and should learn from what their citizens are doing.
Today, Egyptian vendors have become popular in Uganda where they hawk quality electrical appliances, providing hire purchase arrangements that were last enjoyed by our parents in the 1960s when they bought “Made in England” goods. May NBI recognise the equal importance of all its 10 constituent organs!
