Africa: New Nile Pact Stalled

Kampala — Ten years of negotiations over a new protocol governing shared use of the Nile River are hanging in the balance, with Egypt and Sudan refusing to give up their present power over how much water is used by countries further upstream.The current agreement prohibits countries downstream from using Nile waters beyond an agreed curve, and gives Egypt powers to monitor the flow at key points.”The technocrats had worked out all the paper work for a good protocol but the politicians have thrown a clean piece of cloth in the mud,” says Professor Afuna Aduula, chair of the Nile Basin Discourse Forum, a consortium of civil society organisations looking at issues along the world’s longest river.

Congo-Kinshasa: Tables Turn As Rebel Faction Declares Support for Army

Kinshasa — A rebel splinter group in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has said it is ready to back joint operations planned by the governments of DRC and Rwanda against Rwandan Hutu insurgents based in the Kivu provinces.The self-styled new leader of the Congrès national pour la défense du peuple (CNDP), Desiré Kamanzi, also said he would not recognise the outcome of ceasefire negotiations in the Kenyan capital between the DRC government and the main CNDP wing led by renegade general Laurent Nkunda.

Zimbabwe: South Africa Goes Ahead With Urgent Aid

Johannesburg — A R300 million (US$32 million) South African aid package to Zimbabwe appears to have been distributed without an agreed monitoring mechanism in place to ensure transparency, government officials and diplomats have told IRIN.”The distribution of the first batch of maize, small-grain seed and fertilisers that arrived in the country recently has intensified, with farmers accessing it from the 84 Grain Marketing Board (GMB) depots countrywide,” the state-run Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) reported on 14 January.