News 

Monday, February 24, 2014 

EU helps in new River Nile project

KAMPALA, Uganda - Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) are coming up with new monitoring system centre which will help to monitor the quality and quantity of waters in the longest river in Africa.

NBI manages the waters and other projects on the river.

NBI executive Director Teferra  Beyene  told a news conference in Kampala loast week, the new effort is being done with European Union help.

 These include developing an advanced satellite monitoring system which will enable them to monitor  the fate of the river. especially  monitoring ther river.

“The quality and quantity of water in the river is becoming big challenge. We cannot monitor the two effectively. That is why NBI in collaboration with the European Union we are coming up with this system which will help to monitor the quality and quantity of water across the river Nile from its source to the end points in Egypt” he said. 

He said due to the increasing human activities near the river and lakes banks which feed  into the water  it has become highly contaminated by both industrial wastes andsilted soils.

He also highlighted countries like Egypt which he blamed for pumping huge volume of water for irrigation projects in the desert regions where many Egyptian grow food crops and also the upper countries (Riparian countries) Uganda Kenya Tanzania for not protecting the river from industrial pollutants. which ends up into the water stream thus affecting the Quality of River Nile waters  

River Nile is source of livelihood for 11 countries that entirely depends on the river for its power generation, irrigation and water for domestic consumption.

 The 11 NBI members are Rwanda , Burundi , Tanzania, Democratic Republic of Congo Sudan Southern Sudan Ethiopia Egypt  Uganda  and Eritrea as an observer.

By Samuel Nabwiiso, Monday, February 24th, 2014