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The Nile Basin contains the longest river in the world, has an area of 3,030,000 sq. km.
It is a source of ample opportunity for development of the socio-economy of the countries in the region.
10 countries share the Nile waters: Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia,
Eritrea, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda.
The problems of the Nile region are as interconnected as the basin’s very waterways—each flows into the next. Among the most serious challenges are poverty and food insecurity, water shortages, land degradation and pollution from effluents. Deforestation and cultivation of steep slopes have led to heavy soil erosion, loss of biodiversity, and sedimentation of lakes and reservoirs. The Nile has also become seriously polluted by agro chemicals, untreated sewage and industrial waste.
Despite all these problems, however, the resources of this large and complex water system—containing ecosystems as diverse as equatorial Africa’s Lake Victoria, the Sudd Wetland in Sudan, and Egypt’s Mediterranean delta 3,500 km to the north—have enormous potential to address poverty.
The transboundary nature of the Nile Basin presents formidable obstacles to sustainable resource use and national economic development. Unilateral management and control of each country’s individual territory cannot, over the long term, benefit the region as a whole. Equitable and effective water allocation and environmental protection depend on institutionalized regional cooperation. The Challenge Program on Water and Food offers a multidisciplinary research framework for the design of transboundary solutions to the Nile Basin’s many challenges. The program, led by Egypt’s National Water Research Center, is complementing ongoing activities and cooperating with national and other stakeholder organizations in the region. Results of this work will be particularly valuable in other regions where water sharing and basin management require joint action by several countries.
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