Written by Kaleb Demerew, Steven C Roach and Derrick K Hudson

Nationalist ambitions, resource competition, and domestic pressures continue to fuel rivalries among the Nile River’s eleven riparian states. Such rivalries have a long history that dates back to the United Kingdom’s seizure of the Suez Canal in 1875, which helped consolidate its colonial rule over Sudan. The United Kingdom eventually entered into agreements with Egypt (and Sudan) that granted Egypt virtual monopoly control over the Nile’s flow. By the mid-twentieth century, Egypt controlled nearly 90 percent of the river’s flow, excluding upstream countries from development.

Over time, though, these agreements would fuel political tensions among the riparian countries, During decolonization, many of the newly independent riparian countries sought a fairer share of the Nile’s resources, invoking the Nyerere doctrine to sidestep past agreements. By the 1990s, rapid globalization and institutionalized regionalism led to new idealistic agreements that created unprecedented opportunities for cooperation. The 1999 Nile Basin Initiative (NBI), for example, encouraged dialogue on shared water management without reference to historic rights.

For many, the NBI marked a new era of cooperation in which scientific and technical knowledge would inform and support diplomatic negotiations on sharing the Nile’s flow. But for sceptics, it failed to account for nationalist politics in the twenty-first century that would soon undercut the possibilities for sustained cooperation, exposing a realpolitik that prioritized unilateral interests over multilateral governance. These domestic political headwinds ultimately doomed the 2010 Cooperative Framework Agreement (CFA) that was designed to empower upstream states against Egyptian and Sudanese hegemony. Both Egypt and Sudan, for instance, refused to sign the CFA, contending that it infringed on their historical water rights.

In 2011, tensions reached a boiling point after Ethiopia announced plans for the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), a massive project to harness the Blue Nile for electricity and development. While a symbol of national pride for Ethiopia, the GERD is seen by Egypt as a threat to its national survival. In addition to these starkly divided perceptions of the GERD, civil wars and domestic disputes have further destabilized Ethiopia, Sudan, and, to a lesser extent, Egypt and eroded trust in multilateral agreements.

In light of these challenges, basin-wide development projects raise questions beyond issues of technical management or cooperative ideals. Indeed, contentions over the GERD highlight the importance of devising responsive policy. More importantly, they raise the issue of whether cooperation under the NBI was troubled from the start. In our book, Nile Basin Politics: From Coordinated to Cooperative Peace, we address this issue by exploring the political instabilities and persistent hydrohegemony that have complicated cooperation.

We show how domestic and nationalist politics remain the main barrier to Nile Basin cooperation and how liberal institutionalist approaches to the CFA fail to account for these divisions. Despite bilateral and multilateral efforts, coordination has yet to establish a common working interest in regional water security. The rare attempts at piecemeal regional coordination have also failed to merge technical expertise with diplomacy. The 1993 Ethiopia-Egypt accord, which promoted water conservation, collapsed under mistrust and unilateral action. Similarly, the 2015 Declaration of Principles (DoP) lacked enforcement mechanisms and incentives, leading Ethiopia to unilaterally conduct GERD fillings and Egypt to withhold downstream data to maintain leverage. The agreements failed to establish new governing regimes to replace hydrohegemonic politics.

Meanwhile, regional bodies like the African Union (AU) and Intergovernmental Authority for Development (IGAD) have remained largely inactive, failing to mediate effectively the disputes among the Big Three (Ethiopia, Egypt, and Sudan). Some external powers, such as the United States, have approached mediation through coercive diplomacy, which only worsened tensions. In fact, the United States’ strategic relationship with Egypt makes it unlikely that the United States will ever promote an agreement that poses a risk to Egypt’s national security.

Given these challenges of promoting cooperation in the region, our book re-examines the practical need for further policy coordination, which provides a viable alternative grounded in joint management and iterative trust-building. Policy coordination entails the promotion of regionally-driven technical and scientific collaboration schemes that create a common interest by aligning the riparian countries’ domestic political priorities. Coordinated GERD operations, shared research, and joint environmental monitoring could transform the dam from a flashpoint into a platform for regional cooperation. Such practical collaboration builds trust through shared experience, fosters transparency, and proves that joint management is both feasible and mutually beneficial. Most importantly, policy coordination works through rather than against existing domestic and nationalist constraints, showing that sovereignty and joint management may not be mutually exclusive.

Much of the literature on Nile Basin politics focuses on idealistic notions of cooperation among the Big Three. Less discussed, if at all, are issues such as the role of functionalist governance regimes and the role of medium-stake riparian countries for furthering coordination. Our book introduces a functionalist legal approach that may offer a pragmatic solution for codifying coordination. Unlike broad, aspirational treaties, functionalism promotes coordination through targeted, issue-specific agreements, such as joint flood monitoring, shared irrigation management, and collaborative research. Trust is built through practical, iterative engagement; over time, small-scale efforts form the backbone of a broader cooperative framework.

Furthermore, in our book, we show how medium-stake riparian states, such as Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, reinforce the value of issue-based coordination. Initiatives like the Lake Victoria Environmental Management Project (LVEMP) and the Kagera River Basin Organization tackled pollution control and resource efficiency without comprehensive legal agreements. These successes show how incremental, issue-focused coordination and joint management practices foster trust and create pathways for broader collaboration.

In this sense, short-term policy coordination provides a critical bridge to long-term cooperation on security, peace, and shared prosperity. The NBI and CFA prioritized long-term cooperation but lacked short-term trust-building mechanisms essential for progress. Joint management initiatives, such as shared data collection, flood management, and coordinated dam operations, provide a path for building trust while aligning domestic development goals with regional interests.

The recent much-awaited final CFA ratification for legalizing the agreement underscores the shortcomings of top-down frameworks without enforcement, as it establishes a fact-finding mission that requires ‘buy-in’ by parties (that is, Egypt and Sudan) that have thus far refused to ratify the agreement. Policy coordination, by contrast, turns domestic incentives into regional solutions and fosters trust through action rather than rhetoric. Ultimately, it is the most practical and sustainable strategy for making long-term cooperation possible.

Nile Basin Politics
From Coordinated to Cooperative Peace

Edited by Steven C. Roach, University of South Florida, Derrick K. Hudson, Colorado School of Mines and Kaleb Demerew, West Texas A&M University, USA

Find more information on this title here.

Free chapter available on Elgaronline.