Water Security

What is ‘The Niles’?

The Niles has recently undergone a rebirth and evolved into a media platform that covers not only contributions from Sudan and South Sudan, but extends to the entire Nile Basin, which stretches from the river’s origins in Burundi, Rwanda and Ethiopia, to the rich delta on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast.

A publication in which journalists are free to explore the common challenges facing their countries.

Our vision is to provide a publication in which journalists are free to explore the common challenges facing their countries and to focus on solutions to growing water demands and altered water availability, thus cultivating accurate and fact-based reporting that promotes inter-riparian trust, confidence and mutuality.

The Niles invites journalists and organisations working on strengthening reporting in the Nile Basin to make positive contributions to on-going debates around the questions that lie at the core of the current debate around the Nile Basin’s precious resources.

A second basin-wide issue of The Niles – the eleventh in total – was published on the nineteenth Nile Day, celebrated on 22. February 2018 in Ethiopia, as a symbol of cross-border cooperation, and a reminder that yet more remains to be done.

It provides an opportunity to increase awareness about the sustainable management and development of the shared water and related resources for win-win benefits, but also about the consequences of non-cooperation and the challenges of Nile cooperation.

The theme for this year’s Nile Day, hosted by the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) and the Government of Ethiopia was; ‘The Nile: Shared River, Collective Action’. The River Nile is a shared resource which traverses political boundaries, inevitably bringing into play the competing priorities of different uses and users as well as shared challenges that include climate change and environmental degradation.

To obtain the optimal utilisation and ensure sustainability of the resource, Nile Basin States must act collectively, balancing interests and focusing on common goals at Basin level.