July 21, 2023
The Ethiopian Embassy has teamed up with the parliamentary committee on water and irrigation to conduct a two-day consultative workshop on Nile Basin Initiative Cooperation Framework Agreement.
Speaking at the event, Ethiopian Ambassador to South Sudan, Nebil Mahdi said the program aims to create awareness about the cooperative framework and its benefits to the government of South Sudan and the people.
“Time has come for us to utilise our cooperative advantage for common law and development, our relations, cooperation, and capacity building are for better road connectivity, infrastructure, and electricity,” he said, adding they want to identify possible areas for cooperation and capacity building on water resources and irrigation for the two countries.
The chairperson of the Standing Specialized Committee on Water and Irrigation, Bongout Amum, said the awareness would help the committee to prepare themselves.
“It’s to do the orientation on this document on the Nile Basin, this workshop is to prepare the members,” he said.
In 2021, the former Undersecretary in the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation, Emmanuel Parmenas revealed that the Nile Basin Cooperation Framework agreement was tabled in parliament awaiting approval.
“South Sudan is in the process of ratifying the CFA, or Cooperative Framework Agreement, and it has been forwarded to the parliament for deliberations. Once they have deliberated and agreed to sign, it becomes a document that the country has ratified,” he told reporters at the Nile Basin Initiative.
South Sudan would be counted as number seven among the countries that have signed the CFA agreement.
The nine Nile Basin Initiative countries are South Sudan, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.
The CFA, also known as the Entebbe Agreement, was signed by Uganda, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania, Kenya and Burundi out of the 10 Nile Basin Initiative States.