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Ethiopia to Carry Out Irrigation Projects Along River Nile
Ethiopia has expressed its desire to develop close to 200,000 hectares of land through irrigation under a series of projects to be executed under the Eastern Nile Subsidiary Action Program (ENSAP), local media report on Thursday.
A consensus has been reached with the two other members of the Eastern Nile Sub-basin, namely Egypt and Sudan, for the realization of these and other projects, Ato Shiferaw Jaros, Ethiopian Minister of Water Resources, was cited as saying.
Shiferaw's remark came in the wake of a meeting of ministers of water affairs from the Nile Basin countries, which took place last week in Khartoum, capital of Sudan.
ENSAP is a sub-basin program of the Nile Basin Initiative, a partnership among nine African Countries in pursuit of sustainable development and management of the resources in the River Nile.
The irrigation projects intended by Ethiopia include those to be carried out around Lake Tana, which has the capacity to irrigate 50,000 hectares land and another near Nekempt and Didesa, western Ethiopia, which is targeted to irrigate 80,000 hectares using water from Didesa River, Shiferaw said.
Ethiopia also intends to execute two hydro-power projects that will generate about 3,000 Megawatts and the other projects proposed by the three countries include the Eastern Nile Simulation Project, power pulling between Ethiopia and Sudan and water shade management in the Baro Akobo Basin.
According to the minister, the irrigation and hydro-power projects are the first of the 46 projects that Ethiopia has proposed under ENSAP. Egypt and Sudan have 10 hydropower, irrigation and water shade management projects.
The three countries will present their projects at a donors conference scheduled for June this year. The donors conference is organized by the World Bank and expected to be headed by the bank' s President James Wolefenson.
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