Nile Basin

This article analyzes Egypt’s legal position vis-à-vis the Nile Basin Agreement, which went into force in 2011. Egypt’s position on the Nile Basin Agreement is at a legal crossroads. It steadfastly refuses to sign the Agreement, which established a new multilateral system for apportioning the river’s water and economic benefit among the ten states that are part of the basin region. Instead, Egypt prefers status quo policies—a series of antiquated bilateral treaties that violate customary international water law. By refusing to ratify the Nile River Basin Cooperative Framework Agreement (“CFA”), Egypt ignores trends in international water law towards multiparty basin management. This article should be relevant for anyone participating in the ongoing process of the Nile Basin Agreement, for those looking to compare the allocation of Nile Basin waters to other basins, and for those who want to review practical applications of modern international water law.

The Nile was considered to be the highway for trade and population movements since the early days of Egyptian civilisation. During the riverine transportations history of Egypt, a large number of boat types have been used. From the early depictions of sailboats, Egyptian boat have gone through a massive reconfigurations that changed its shape, building materials, and rigging techniques.
This paper will focus on the final huddle of cargo boats on the Nile. The presentation is part of an HFF funded studentship at the University of Southampton focusing on the boatbuilding traditions from the late 18th century up to modern day Egypt.
It will aim at presenting the early development of the different types of boats, and will trace the evolution of its hull shape, hull material, and rigging techniques during the past 200 years, through the examination and study of photographic evidences and Euro-American writings during the period of the study.
The researcher will present different resources of information, different methodologies, and the future of the research.
The paper will also investigate the surrounding social, economic and environmental aspects that affected the evolution of these boats, and theories about the extinction of wooden sailboats on the Nile.

At Bîr Tirfawi and Bîr Sahara in the now hyperarid Egyptian Sahara, relict lake deposits located in adjacent deflation basins near 22 54 0 57.58 00 N 28 50 0 19.54 00 E preserve evidence of different hydroclimate conditions that enabled cultural activities during the Middle Stone Age e Middle Paleolithic (MSA-MP). Single aliquot regeneration optically stimulated luminescence (SAR-OSL) dating techniques were applied to sediment samples with archaeological contexts to generate a more precise geochronology for the groundwater-supported lakes and prehistoric activities in the region. New age determinations on nine samples collected from Bîr Sahara East and Bîr Tirfawi are presented for the five paleolake phases originally described by the excavation team. The new analyses yielded dates that are more precise, and refine the original geochronology for water availability at this location. The determinations suggest that some of the originally defined lake phases are temporally indistinct. SAR-OSL dates of the West 2 and West 3 lake phases defined at Bîr Sahara East overlap in time, and are contemporaneous with the Grey 3 phase at Bîr Tirfawi, at around 102 ka. The refined age for the Grey 1 phase at Bîr Tirfawi dates to 135 ± 21.6 ka, and two dates for the Post-Lake phase at Bîr Sahara center around 41 ka. A probability distribution plot (pdf) of all nine of the analytical results resolves the chronology of groundwater-supported paleolakes and prehistoric activities in the region around 41 ka (MIS 3), 80 ka (MIS 5a), 102 (MIS 5c-d), and 115 ka (MIS 5d-e). Precise dates for the sediments at these archaeological sites are important for several lines of multidisciplinary inquiry, including the role of Middle-Late Pleistocene climate on landscape change and water availability, variations in material culture and the adaptations in populations of anatomically modern humans (AMH) in the Sahara. Research in the Bîr Sahara e Bîr Tirfawi region is particularly interesting because the sites are within the modern hyperarid core of NE Africa, and are not located along the coasts or major waterway corridors " Out of Africa " like the Nile Valley. Semi-permanent paleolakes and long-lived spring-fed oases located in the modern arid belt west of the River Nile between Egypt and Sudan were crucial biomes for sustaining the lifeways and dispersal of Homo throughout the Quaternary. However, the importance and the role of such ecosystems dispersed across the North African landscape is somewhat underestimated in existing hypotheses that aim to describe hominin adaptation and dispersals.

The competing needs and prejudicial consequences entailed by a unilateral exploitation of shared waters have created technical and juridical problems. Thus, the search for plausible criteria for defining the water right of states has ultimately resulted in the formulation of diverse legal doctrines, which failed to specify how much of a state sovereignty is going to be compromised. The researcher contends that the incompatibility of the sovereign needs with the legal doctrines, particularly in Africa, is due to the imposition of territorial states over the natural highways created by rivers. Therefore, without addressing the problems of the state system, it is impossible to come up with binding legal doctrine and the Nile Basin is not an exception to this rule. In short, this study’s premise towards the legal understanding of the distribution of the shared water resources of Africa and of course the Nile is panAfricanist. As long as the African states undo the concept of the maladap...

In this research paper, the flow characteristics downstream the radial gate of the New Naga Hammadi Barrages physical model were investigated. These characteristics include the main parameters of the submerged hydraulic jump, the vertical velocity distribution along the bed, the velocity decay, and the stability of bed protection downstream the apron of the stilling basin. Various configuration of the stilling basin were proposed and tested. The physical model was built at the Hydraulics Research Institute, Delta Barrages, Egypt. The used flume has 1.0 m wide, 26.0 m long and 1.20 m deep. The flume side walls were made of glass with steel-frames to allow visual investigation of the flow patterns and stability of bed protection. Three designs of stilling basin were tested with 36 different flow conditions for every proposed design. The output of this extensive investigation recommended the stilling basin design of horizontal floor. The criteria for such selection was shortest length ...

In this research paper, the flow characteristics downstream the radial gate of the New Naga Hammadi Barrages physical model were investigated. These characteristics include the main parameters of the submerged hydraulic jump, the vertical velocity distribution along the bed, the velocity decay, and the stability of bed protection downstream the apron of the stilling basin. Various configuration of the stilling basin were proposed and tested. The physical model was built at the Hydraulics Research Institute, Delta Barrages, Egypt. The used flume has 1.0 m wide, 26.0 m long and 1.20 m deep. The flume side walls were made of glass with steel-frames to allow visual investigation of the flow patterns and stability of bed protection. Three designs of stilling basin were tested with 36 different flow conditions for every proposed design. The output of this extensive investigation recommended the stilling basin design of horizontal floor. The criteria for such selection was shortest length ...

Das Säbelrasseln Ägyptens in der Nilwasserfrage stößt an seine Grenzen, meint Tobias von Lossow. Da die Notwendigkeit zu kooperieren stetig zunimmt, müssen Ägypten und Äthiopien ihre politischen Absichtserklärungen endlich glaubhaft mit Leben füllen.

The Nile (i.e. The Ethiopian Blue Nile) is the longest stream on earth flows a distance of 1,529 km from its source, conceived out of Ethiopian Lake Tana highlands a spring called Gish Abay in Ethiopia and spill into the Egypt Mediterranean coast; more than 300 million people rely on Nile's. Shared among 11countries Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda; the river basin takes 10% of the total Africa content and 40% of Africa's population live in the Nile River basin while the White Nile, the smaller source originates in central Africa.

Historically the Nile constituted the major source of life for million of inhabitants within its basin. Its basin has been the cradle of ancient and prosperous civilizations. The Nile basin is rich in natural tangible and intangible resources which are witnessing massive processes of grabbing in the recent decades. Resource grabbing is a complexity directly associated with the ownership and foreign direct investments. It is a challenging issue for the international juridical system in terms of transparency, accountability, fight against corruption, money laundering, human rights and national sovereignty, international development cooperation and humanitarian integrity. Sometimes, the emphasis on land or water grabbing alone might be generalized, bloated and exaggeratedly over reported, and the actors behind it might be misleadingly described. But, when we consider the overall and the complex impact and implications of realistic and dystopian outlook of resource grabbing and future p...

Trends in rainfall at 39 locations of the Nile River Basin (NRB) in Africa were analyzed. Comparison was made between rainfall trend results from the long-term data and those of short-term series selected over different time periods. The bias on trend results from series of short-term records was quantified. Homogeneity test was conducted to assess the coherence of the trend directions on a regional basis. Based on an assumed population (for simplicity) of rainfall data time periods in the range 75–100 years, bias in the short-term trend analysis was noted to reduce by about 10% for every 10% increase in record length. Under some conditions if respected, it was possible to derive trends at stations with short rainfall records based on those at nearby stations with longer term records but in the same region. Using the same data record length and uniform time period at all the selected stations, an improved regional coherence of rainfall trend results was obtained. In the equatorial region, trend in annual rainfall was found mainly positive and significant at level α = 5% in 4 of the 7 stations. Collectively for Sudan, Ethiopia and Egypt, trends in the annual rainfall were mostly negative and significant at α = 5% in 69% of the 32 stations. Heterogeneity in the trend directions for the entire NRB was confirmed at α = 1% in 13% of the 39 stations. These findings are vital for water and agricultural management practices.