The following post is by Dr. Salman. M.A. Salman, an academic researcher and consultant on water law and policy and former water law advisor to the World Bank. You can reach Dr. Salman at SalmanMASalman [at] gmail.com.
In a stunning development, the Republic of South Sudan announced on Monday 8 July 2024 that its Transitional National Legislative Assembly (TNLA) unanimously voted to accede to the Nile Basin Cooperative Framework Agreement (CFA) [see here].
The CFA (also known as the Entebbe Agreement) has an intricate history which dates back to 1999, following the establishment by the Nile Basin riparian countries of the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI). The main objective of the NBI has been to conclude a cooperative framework agreement that would incorporate the principles, structures and institutions of the NBI, and that would be inclusive of all the Nile riparians. Work on the CFA, facilitated by the World Bank, the UNDP and other donors, started immediately after the NBI was formally established, and continued for more than ten years.
However, the process ran into some major difficulties as a result of the resurfacing and hardening of the respective positions of the riparians over the Nile colonial treaties, as well as the Egyptian and Sudanese claims to what they see as their acquired uses and rights of the Nile waters. Egypt and Sudan demanded an explicit reference to those uses and rights (termed as their “water security”) in the CFA; a demand that was vehemently rejected by the other riparians who broached the banner of “equitable and reasonable utilization.” Those differences persisted and could not be resolved at the negotiations or ministerial levels, and no agreement on the final draft CFA could be reached.
Nonetheless, on 14 May 2010, in an historic development, four of the Nile riparians (Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda) signed the CFA in Entebbe, Uganda, and were subsequently joined by Kenya and Burundi, raising the number of the signatories to six.
The CFA lays down some basic principles for the protection, sharing and management of the Nile Basin. It establishes the principle that each Nile Basin state has the right to use, within its territory, the waters of the Nile River Basin, and lays down a number of factors for determining equitable and reasonable utilization. The CFA is modelled largely on the UN Convention on the Law of the Non-navigational Uses of International Watercourses.
In addition to the factors enumerated in the Watercourses Convention, the CFA includes the contribution of each basin state to the waters of the Nile River System, and the extent and proportion of the drainage area in the territory of each basin state [see here]. The CFA will enter into force 60 days after six countries have ratified or acceded to the document and deposited their instrument with the African Union; i.e. on 6 October 2024.
The process of ratification of the CFA started in June 2013, four years after its signature, by Ethiopia, followed in August of that year by Rwanda. Tanzania ratified the CFA in 2015, followed by Uganda in 2019, [see here]. Burundi joined those four riparians and ratified the CFA in 2023, raising the number of ratifications critically to five [see here].
Subsequently, all eyes were cast on the ratification by Kenya, the sixth country to sign the CFA, which would enable the CFA to enter into force. However, that did not take place. Instead, South Sudan did it, putting Kenya in the awkward position of being the only signatory not to ratify the CFA.
The Republic of South Sudan emerged as an independent state on 9 July 2011, and was admitted to the NBI on 5 July 2012 [see here]. That decision clearly favored the Nile upper riparians, based on ethnicity, geography, history, culture and interests. When it joined the NBI, South Sudan could not sign the CFA because the signing process closed in 2000, long before its birth. But, it could accede to the instrument.
The pressures from each of the two sides to the CFA on South Sudan kept South Sudan wavering on accession and none-accession to the CFA for a long time. In fact, the proposed bill for the accession of South Sudan had been on the agenda of the TNLA since mid-2023, until its unanimous sudden approval was announced on 8 July 2024.
The entry into force of the CFA will create new momentous realities which Egypt and Sudan cannot, and indeed should not, overlook or underestimate. It will enable the establishment of the Nile Basin Commission replacing the NBI with wider and more elaborate mandate, power, visibility and recognition by the world water and development aid communities. Entry into force of the CFA will also end the long academic and futile debate on the Nile colonial treaties. Thus, it is for Egypt and Sudan own interests to join the CFA, and to work in the spirit of cooperation with the other Nile riparians to manage, share, develop and protect the Nile River Basin. Afterall, and as mentioned above, the CFA is modelled on the UN Watercourses Convention that was endorsed by more than one hundred countries in 1997, and has been in force since 2014.
