African Countries to Protect River Nile

AFRICAN countries sharing the River Nile have launched a joint awareness campaign to protect the Nile waters. The Nile Basin water supports about 300 million people from 10 African countries: Uganda, Burundi, DR Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania.

The Executive Director of the Nile Basin Initiative, Mr Patrick Kahangire, said increasing public awareness on the Nile water resources will help harness the river's endowments and improve lives of the 300 million people who depend on it.

Kahangire was speaking at an awareness workshop at Resort Beach Hotel Entebbe. The workshop drew participants from the 10 member countries of the Nile Bain.

He said awareness is being done through the Nile Basin's Initiative Shared Vision Programme (SVP).

"This means developing the river to reduce its vulnerability to droughts, better management of floods to ensure more water, food and electricity and to do so in a way that respects the needs of the river system itself so it can continue to nurture generations to come," Kahangire said.

He said the SVP has eight projects: Applied Training, Nile Trans-boundary Environmental Action, Nile Basin Regional Power Trade, Water for Agriculture and Water Resources Planning and Management among others.

Kahangire said with populations along the Nile Bain expected to double by 2025, all countries sustained by the Nile Basin waters face big challenges of increasing poverty and water shortages.

Speaking at the opening of the workshop, Uganda's Minister of State for Water Maria Mutagamba said the challenges on the Nile Basin warrant concerted efforts to address them. Mutagamba is also the President of the African Ministerial Council on Water.

"As you are aware the statistics on the livelihoods of the majority of the people in the Basin indicate poverty is prevalent. The trends in socio-economic development are equally not encouraging and the environment on which most of the livelihood is derived is increasingly getting mismanaged and degraded," Mutagamba said.

he said the recent drought that led to the drop of the water levels on Lake Victoria has a wider regional impact because it has affected water supply around the lake.

"All these conditions happen in the basin that has inadequate capacity and safeguards," she said. "The NBI is further challenged to contribute to the solution searching to avoid such scenarios in future. This can be in terms of awareness raising, early warning systems and good management practices," Mutagamba said.

Source: The Monitor (Kampala) March 8, 2006 ; Evelyn Lirri, Entebbe