South Sudan to join the Nile Basin Cooperative Framework Agreement - Daily Ethiopia

South Sudan has said it is on the way to join the Nile Basin Cooperative Framework Agreement, which Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania and Burundi have signed. South Sudan’s Water and Irrigation Minister, Paul Mayom Akech has been quoted as saying "South Sudan does not recognize - and underline does not recognize – the content of the 1959 agreement." The minister added that at the time South Sudan did not exist and could not say anything, but "today we say, we have nothing to do with this agreement."

The minister told a local radio station that South Sudan had joined the Nile Basin Initiative and had already gone a long way towards joining the Cooperative Framework Agreement which he described as an entity within which all the Nile Basin countries come together and discuss how best they could utilize water resources. Egypt sent a high level delegation led by Prime Minister Hisham Kandil to South Sudan last week. The Egyptian Prime Minister signed Memoranda of Understanding with Vice-President Riek Machar on education, health, agriculture and investment. There was no MoU signed on the Nile waters. MFA