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Comment by bilbo0s | Hacker News Reader

Cairo claims a historic right to the river dating from a 1929 treaty between Egypt and Sudan represented by colonial power Britain

And

A 1959 treaty boosted Egypt's allocation to around 66 percent of the river's flow, with 22 percent for Sudan

Wow. That sounds like it obliges Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda to collectively use no more than 12% of the Nile's flow. Colonialism was not good to Africans south of the sahara. No wonder they got together and made their own treaty.

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The 12% is allocated for evaporation losses. Those countries get 0%.

Except the percentages max out at 100% design capacity. So in flood years (defined as exceeding this capacity) the surplus water isn't governed by the allocation.

This has been Egypt's excuse for syphoning water beyond the design elevation to their New Valley Project.

They just don't like that reasoning being used against them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Valley_Project

Wow.

I stand corrected.

Ethiopia was the only country that wasn't successfully colonized (barring brief Italian occupation). It really is a shame that their government collapsed in the 70s.

Wars are fought over water and water usage. It’s probably the most shared resource on earth with broad-reaching impacts that isn’t the earth, itself.

Oh, I agree.

I was just not fully informed on how one sided a lot of those water use treaties were. It's a bit jarring to see the details laid out like that.

Those countries have other sources of fresh water besides the Nile

This claim loses significance when you consider 70% of Ethiopia's water resource is in the Nile basin. There is no development without using that water.

Yes, but those sources, in many cases, are also source of the Nile. I mean, as a matter of hydrology, it's a basin. Unless you're implying that they can only take 12% of the flow of Nile tributaries, but would be free to take 100% of the flow from lakes that feed the Nile tributaries? Somehow, I don't think that's what the colonial treaties meant. I'm pretty certain any draw down of flow from Lake Tana for instance, would also violate the treaty. Definitely any draw down of flow from Lake Victoria would be a violation. There's no way the Sudan and Egypt would be OK with that.

But Ethiopia is not a party to either of the two treaties.

Yes but that seems irrelevant to who should get to use it. That’s not how the wealthier Northern African states have treated other scarce resources like electricity or food during droughts.

Now that one of the poor upstream states wants to use the water passing through their backyard to tackle these issues, the most important issue is who needs a given resource more?

Yes, and this is only one of the sources of the Nile.

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