Water Cooperation on the Nile – Developing the Nile Basin Sustainability Framework

With the Nile Basin Sustainability Framework (NBSF), the Nile Basin riparian countries agreed on a conceptual structure for organising the policies, strategies and guidelines needed to attain sustainable management and development of the Nile River Basin in a coherent way. The NBSF is an important strategic planning tool that provides an overall direction for the cooperative management and development of the river basin. Its goal is to complement and operationalise the general goals and principles of cooperation of the Nile Basin Council of Ministers of Water (Nile-COM), endorsed in 1999, and to ensure the consistency of planned infrastructure projects with the policies and strategies agreed upon in the Nile Basin Initiative’s (NBI) programme of action.

The German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) programme, in support of the NBI, based in Uganda, contracted adelphi to assist in the development of NBSF and to turn the existing technical framework into a political document. adelphi drafted a policy document and technical annex to be discussed and endorsed by the governments of the Nile riparian states.