Nile is in mortal danger, from its source to the sea
By CNA
All along its 6,500km length, alarm bells are ringing.
From Egypt to Uganda, AFP teams have gone out on the ground to gauge the decline of a river that drains a tenth of the African continent.
At its mouth on the Mediterranean, Sayed Mohammed is watching Egypt’s fertile Nile Delta disappear. In Sudan, fellow farmer Mohammed Jomaa fears for his harvests, while at its threatened source in Uganda, there is less and less hydroelectric power for Christine Nalwadda Kalema to light her mud and wattle home.
“The Nile is the most important thing for us,” said Jomaa, who at 17 is the latest generation of his family to work the river’s rich banks at Alty in Gezira state.
“We certainly do not wish for anything to change,” he said.
But the Nile is no longer the unperturbable river of myth. In half a century its flow has dropped from 3,000 cubic metres per second to 2,830 cubic metres.
Yet it could get much, much worse. With multiple droughts in east Africa, its flow could fall by 70 per cent, according to the United Nations’ most dire predictions.
Every year for the past six decades, the Mediterranean has eaten away between 35m and 75m of the Nile Delta. If the sea level rises even by a metre, a third of this intensely fertile region could disappear, the UN fears, forcing 9 million people from their homes.
