Nile Basin States Sign Agreement in Uganda, Minus Egypt and Sudan

In April I wrote about negotiations between East African countries over how to share water from the Nile. Egypt and Sudan ultimately refused to sign the proposed agreement, but other countries, seemingly led by Ethiopia, decided to move forward. Today they sign the agreement in Uganda:

Egypt, which gets almost all its water needs from the Nile but faces possible shortages by 2017, has angered the upstream states by sticking to colonial-era pacts that guarantee it can use most of the Nile’s flow.

Egypt and Sudan are not expected to attend the meeting.

[…]

Sudan said that more time was needed to broker any new deal. It said an agreement without it and Egypt would be “unfortunate”, undermining decades of efforts to come up with a formula acceptable to all nine countries.

“We are very close. Why go on your own? We just need more time,” said Ahmed El-Mufti, legal counsel for Sudan’s delegation.

As I said before I am just beginning to learn about these water issues, but I will be watching how the agreement gets implemented and what the reaction from Egypt and Sudan looks like.