NORWAY-AFRICA: Nile Basin research programme

From the southernmost source in Burundi to the outflow in the Mediterranean, the river Nile stretches over 6,600 kilometres, draining its water from 10 countries - Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, the DR Congo, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Egypt.

More than 370 million people make up the population of these tributary countries, a number estimated by the UN to rise to 635 million by 2030.

Already, the basin is characterised by water scarcity. In 1959, Egypt and Sudan, the downstream riparian states, shared the waters among themselves. Now, the upstream countries, with growing ambitions for industrialisation, hydro-power and artificial irrigation, no longer accept this and demand a right of water utilisation.

Negotiations have gone on for many years but to date no agreement has been reached.

"Struggle over the Nile's water has had global political consequences in the past and could fan existing conflicts in the Horn of Africa and Somalia, threaten the peace agreements in the Sudan, and influence the power balance in the Middle East in the future," said Professor Terje Tvedt, a world expert on Nile issues and one of the initiators of the Nile Basin Research Programme.

But Tvedt adds that the basin also has the potential to become a model for management of other international river basins.

The Nile Basin Research Programme is a multi-disciplinary research project on topics related to the Nile Basin. The main objective is to stimulate research in the Nile region and contribute to the peaceful utilisation of resources.

"By encouraging academic collaboration, our hope is to also stimulate collaboration and understanding beyond science," said programme director Dr Tore Saetersdal.

The programme's core activity is a guest researcher scheme at the University of Bergen in Norway, targeting senior researchers from the Nile countries. This is organised thematically and researchers get to spend four to six months in Norway.

"The idea has been to bring researchers from the basin together in 'a faraway place', to work with their colleagues from the region and Norway," Saetersdal said.

The programme traces its history back to the late 1990s when a research group at Bergen, organised around Tvedt, came up with the idea of a collaborative programme on the Nile.

A concept note was endorsed by the Nile-COM, a meeting of the Nile Basin water ministers in 2003, and the final proposal submitted to the Norwegian MFA in 2004.

All the way, the programme has been affiliated to the Nile Basin Initiative, a partnership by the Nile riparian states funded by the World Bank and aiming to create the basis for a long-term solution to the management of the river.

Since 2007, the Nile programme has hosted six groups of researchers with topics such as the history of Nile development, biodiversity, climate change and social-economic issues related to the Nile basin.

A total of 53 researchers have taken part in the programme, which for 2006-10 has been funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs with a total of 44 million nok (US$7.5 million).

A number of workshops, seminars and conferences have been organised in Norway and within the region. Last June, the first Nile Basin Research Conference was run in Dar es Salaam inTanzania, in close collaboration with the Applied Training Project of the NBI.

The conference gathered more than 120 researchers, students and decision makers, and drew attention from other organisations, embassies and the media.

The programme has been directly involved in creating the Nile Basin University Forum, a regional academic network currently comprising 18 universities in all the Nile basin countries.

This platform for university collaboration within the Nile basin countries is meant to promote academic research and collaboration within Integrated Water Resource Management in its widest definition.

During the spring term of 2010, 13 books and a number of journal articles are planned for publication, and book launch seminars are occurring in Kampala, Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, Khartoum, Addis Ababa and Bujumbura, along with a major research conference in Cairo.

"The model of NBRP has drawn international attention," Saetersdal said. "Experience has shown the value of bringing researchers together for an extended period. This is for example one of the very few international arenas where Eritreans and Ethiopians are working side by side."

His aim is to continue the programme into a second phase from 2011 to 2014: "In a second phase, we want much more of the activities to take place within the region itself and to increase the institutional cooperation."

One step in this direction has been the employment of a regional programme coordinator based at Makerere University in Uganda, from January 2010.

But the plans go further: "After a stay in Bergen, the participating researchers will go back to their institution, gather further data and then convene again at an institution within the region," Saetersdal said.

"The research groups will be organised jointly between the University of Bergen and strong institutions in the region. Our aim is to include not only individual researchers but also their students and their institutions in long-term cooperation for the benefit of the Nile basin."

* The Nile Basin programme publishes its research results through a series of edited books and monographs as well as articles in peer review journals. Among recent and forthcoming books are:

- Water, Culture, Identity, Terje Oestigaard (ed), BRIC, 2009
- The River Nile in the Post-Colonial Age, Terje Tvedt (ed), IB Tauris, 2010
- Climate and Health in the Nile Basin, Asgeir Sorteberg and Ellen Viste (eds), Fountain, in press.
- Traditional Water Management in the Congo Rainforest, Raphael Tshimanga, Fountain, in press

Publications are available for free download from the ,Bergen Online Research Archive. For an overview of previous publications including journal articles, see www.nile.uib.no.

Comment:
Why don't you and other non-Africans not stop interfering in Africa's business? Everyone knows that you are there to play Egypt for your advantage.

You and any non-African country, institute and anything else has no place to dictate the Africans in Africa anymore. Any treaty made by the English colonialists and Egypt during the darkest era in Africa's history is invalid and illegal after de-colonialisation. That Egypt had a treaty about the Nile with England at that time shows Egypt was collaborating to prolong colonialism and the crimes committed at that time against the upstream nations except Ethiopia was enormously cruel.

The seven black African nations are going to sign the agreement about the future of the Nile as the water 100% comes from them, with 86-95% from Ethiopia. The only right Egypt has is to use the water if/when it reaches there after the upstream nation (the owner of the water) allows it to go to the desert where more half of it evaporates.

We don't need you. Africa looks no more to the North but to the east where the sun is rising.

Selamawit