Background

The Nile Basin is home to over 257 million people, which is about 54% of the total population of the countries that share the Nile.
Ethiopia’s Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam project, on the Blue Nile, threatens downstream countries (Egypt and Sudan) current water supply.
To overcome competition over water resources, Nile Basin countries can collaborate in harvesting more rainfall and increase Nile flow to maximize benefit sharing to reach a win-win solution.

Term Project Objective

The objective of the research is to identify the level of water stress and the countries dependency

ratios on the Nile River, based on the published data using developed charts. It is an attempt

to raise awareness of the international community on the continued stumbling negotiations

between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia about GERD; the matter that would have negative repercussions

on the stability and development of the whole region, particularly Egypt.

Main Topics

Yearly renewable and available water resources
Dependency ratios on Water resources in Nile Basin
Population distribution in the Basin
Renewable Water Resources per capita
Prediction of Eastern Nile countries Populations till 2070
Decay of Yearly Water Share per capita in Eastern Nile Basin countries

Methods and Data

Data Sources

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
Worldinfometers
Nile Basin Atlas

Libraries

library(dplyr)
library(reshape2)
library(readxl)
library(plotly)

Yearly renewable and available water resources

Internal renewable water resources (IRWR) is that part of the water resources(surface water and groundwater) generated from endogenous precipitation.
External renewable water resources (ERWR) is the part of a country’s renewable water resources that enter from upstream countries through rivers or aquifers.
It’s clear that Egypt and Sudan have most of their resources produced outside their borders.

Dependency ratios

The high dependency ratio aggravates the situation of a country. Having most of the resources produced outside the borders, putting Egypt and Sudan in a critical position; given the fact the lack of control of these resources.

Population in NB countries

Ethiopia’s population is equal to or bit greater than Egypt’s, establishing an equally compelling need for water for increased food production.

Water Share Per capita in Year 2020

Despite the fact that Ethiopia’s population is abit greater than Egypt, the available water resources per capita is almost the double the amount that Egypt and Sudan. Also, it is clear that Egypt and Sudan witness water scarcity conditions as the resources per capita fall below the 1000 cubic meter/year, putting limits in their rate of growth.
Egypt and Sudan share the same challenges in the Blue Nile sub basin in terms of water resources availability, which is the main determinant of development of a country.

Linear regression analysis for projections

## 
## Call:
## lm(formula = Population ~ Year, data = egy_pop)
## 
## Residuals:
##     Min      1Q  Median      3Q     Max 
## -4.5508 -3.7318  0.2409  2.9508  7.1247 
## 
## Coefficients:
##               Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)    
## (Intercept) -2.441e+03  8.328e+01  -29.32 2.46e-15 ***
## Year         1.257e+00  4.176e-02   30.10 1.63e-15 ***
## ---
## Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
## 
## Residual standard error: 3.848 on 16 degrees of freedom
## Multiple R-squared:  0.9826, Adjusted R-squared:  0.9816 
## F-statistic: 906.2 on 1 and 16 DF,  p-value: 1.625e-15

## 
## Call:
## lm(formula = Population ~ Year, data = eth_pop)
## 
## Residuals:
##     Min      1Q  Median      3Q     Max 
## -11.558  -8.108   1.309   6.109  14.691 
## 
## Coefficients:
##               Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)    
## (Intercept) -3.022e+03  1.813e+02  -16.66 1.56e-11 ***
## Year         1.548e+00  9.092e-02   17.03 1.13e-11 ***
## ---
## Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
## 
## Residual standard error: 8.379 on 16 degrees of freedom
## Multiple R-squared:  0.9477, Adjusted R-squared:  0.9444 
## F-statistic:   290 on 1 and 16 DF,  p-value: 1.125e-11

## 
## Call:
## lm(formula = Population ~ Year, data = sud_pop)
## 
## Residuals:
##     Min      1Q  Median      3Q     Max 
## -2.9864 -1.9235 -0.0628  1.5352  4.7121 
## 
## Coefficients:
##               Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)    
## (Intercept) -1187.7398    49.4572  -24.02 5.60e-14 ***
## Year            0.6085     0.0248   24.54 4.01e-14 ***
## ---
## Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
## 
## Residual standard error: 2.285 on 16 degrees of freedom
## Multiple R-squared:  0.9741, Adjusted R-squared:  0.9725 
## F-statistic:   602 on 1 and 16 DF,  p-value: 4.01e-14

Projection of population in Eastern Nile countries till 2070

A growing population that needs a higher demand for drinking water and water for agriculture shows that the shortages of water that are expected to affect many regions of the world will have severe consequences on the lives of millions of people.

Decay of Yearly Water Share per capita in Eastern Nile Basin countries

The eventual increase in countries population will become problematic as overpopulation will strain current water resources to their limits, cause an increase in water pollution, and lead to an increase in civil and international conflicts over existing water supplies.

Conclusions

Whatever Ethiopia gains from the Nile, Egypt and Sudan lose. Overall, nearly all of Egypt’s population lives along the Nile and is entirely dependent on it.
Ethiopia’s right to development and building the dam is well recognized, but also Nile water is a matter of life to Egypt and Sudan.
All the parties have to be flexible so that the three countries reach a solution based on win-win principle.

Recommendations

Meanwhile, the Nile River receives only 4 % of the sum of available water resources in upstream countries, but if the Nile basin countries cooperated, this will lead to collecting hundreds of billion square meters of water.
Scientific term of water footprint (Green Water, Blue Water and Grey Water), which means total amount of freshwater used directly and indirectly by an individual, community or a country over a period of time, has to be introduced and commonly used.
It is a geographic indicator, which shows the amount of water used/polluted by a group along with the location that needs more attention and research in the future.

Water Stressed Countries in Nile River Basin And their dependancies ratiosFinal Term Presentation