Nile Basin summit postponed

The African Summit on Nile waters which was scheduled to take place in Kampala, next week, has been postponed.Daniel Masamba, the Communications Officer at the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) Secretariat in Entebbe, said that the summit was supposed to attract all Heads of State from the East African Community (EAC). “What is apparent now is that the Summit has been postponed and the reasons are not yet known,” Masamba said. Egypt’s assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Mona Omar also said on Wednesday that the Summit was postponed. According to media reports, Egypt had planned to propose the establishment of an investment and development commission similar to the Cooperative Framework Agreement (CFA) signed by five upstream states including Rwanda in May last year. The CFA seeks to establish a permanent Nile River Basin commission which will set clear procedures of water sharing thereby replacing the two widely disputed colonial-era pacts deemed unfair by the seven countries, including Rwanda. Egypt and Sudan say both the 1959 agreement, as well as another accord signed in 1929 with British colonialists, stipulate prior approval by all Nile Basin states before implementing any water-utilization projects. Egypt’s unyielding stance has provoked criticism from basin states, which argue that the historic agreements are invalid because they were ratified before Nile Basin states gained independence. Nile Basin countries include; Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, Sudan, Kenya, Ethiopia, Egypt, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Ends

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Nile Basin summit postponed