The World Bank and other multilateral donors’ Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) has had some success in its decade-long existence: river basin countries no longer adopt shrill tones when dealing with one another. As the NBI’s Gordon Mumbo puts it, there is growing “confidence-building and trust among the riparian countries as they cooperate and invest, meaning issues of stereotyping disappear”. But it has failed on core water-sharing problems like off-take from the Blue Nile.

As White Nile countries need far less water, they are less engaged in the talks and sometimes use the issue as a bargaining chip for other negotiations. For the NBI to be effective, Egypt needs to be persuaded to prepare for a new agreement over Nile water sharing, which should at least include Ethiopia as a party. 
 

Back to Nile, Troubled Waters