THE Cabinet approved the Ratification of the Nile River Basin Cooperative Frame work.

THE Cabinet meeting sat on Monday July 8th 2019 at State House, Entebbe has resolved and approved the Ratification of the Nile River Basin Cooperative Frame work which will enables more than 300 million people rely on the waters of the River Nile. The Nile river basin contains over 10% of Africa’s landmass, in 11 countries: Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan, Egypt, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea and Kenya. Many of these countries rely almost exclusively on the Nile as their source of freshwater.

According to the members of cabinet of the Republic of Uganda think that signing of the Cooperative Frame Work agreement is important because it would help in providing of a basis for establishment of the Nile River Basin Commission which will be a legal entity in the Nile Basin countries unlike the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) which is transitional arrangement without any binding legal basis which is needed to regulate the use, Development, Protection, Conservation and Management of the Nile River Basin water resources for the benefits of all the Nile Basin countries to enable donors to continue and upscale funding the Nile Basin as the Commission would be able to enter into legal arrangements with donors directly, unlike the present situation where the Initiative does so through the World Bank of GIZ, which charges a lot of transaction fees.

River Nile is the longest River in the World. Flowing northward through the tropical climate of eastern Africa and into the Mediterranean Sea, the river passes through 11 countries: Tanzania, Uganda,Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Ethiopia,Eritrea, South Sudan, Sudan and Egypt.