Ethiopian stake on the Nile

Lecture on Hydro-Politics

Master of Political Science

Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia

December 2006

Why self-pity? Why the insistence of Ethiopia on the self-pity discourse concerning the Nile issue? Why does Ethiopia keeps accusing Egypt of deterring her from using the waters of the Nile inside the Ethiopian territory? Why to look for the enemy ‘outside’, without considering the internal weaknesses?

One can carry several research and analyses to understand how Egypt could always prevent Ethiopia from using the Nile waters… for decades, or even for centuries according to the mythology. To find out the Egyptian strategies and tactics to divert Ethiopia from the Nile is an interesting puzzle to be built…. Egypt has a stronger economy, a superior military capacity, good experts well-known in the international milieu, economic support from the US, unquestionable strategic geography, etc etc… but what it really matters is not to understand the diverse factors that detained Ethiopia from using the Nile waters?

Let’s see the geography… multiplicity of highlands, dramatic gorges, small plots of land, overpopulated highlands and underpopulated lowlands. Let’s see the economics... agricultural economy, rainfed agriculture, low trade, economy of war during 30+2 years. Let’s see politics… war as a priority, underdeveloped economy, famine crises with political consequences, lack of investment in public works, including water infrastructures. Well… we could continue to find the internal reasons for the failure of Ethiopia on using the Nile waters… we could crisscross these internal factors with the external factors and find a lot of interesting facts.

But the question keeps being…. Why self-pity? There are ways of starting to use the water… it is happening already and it will happen in the future, with or without governmental decisions and actions. When there is scarcity, there is vulnerability; therefore there is adaptation (resilience) or non-adaptation (contestation). If I was an anthropologist I would probably go to study how at the local level the different social groups deal with water uses and strategies to manage the water resources. Although, the level to be taken into account here is the regional level, or the Basin level if it sounds better! Therefore it is important to focus on how international political economy influences the water politics in the Nile Basin.

Indeed the designation of this course is Hydropolitics, but I do not really think that there is something that we can call hydropolitics… hydropolitics exist in the wider context of the international and regional power relations. Thus, if hydropoltics exist they are submersed in wider geopolitics… the water is one element among others, and maybe not the most relevant. Although it is important to keep in mind that water is firstly and foremost a political resource!