The Sources of the Nile

We travel to the sources of the Nile in Jinja, Uganda, to celebrate #EverydayNile photo-exhibition and the end of the project Open Water Diplomacy, reflecting on how our journey has contributed to water diplomacy by connecting people, places, and stories.

Yasir Mohamed, associate professor of hydrology and former Minister of Water and Irrigation of Sudan, and Mohamed Abdulrahman, journalist and former director of the Sudanese News Agency, reflect on their experience as member of the Sudanese negotiation team on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.

2019 is the year of the Nile, marking the 20th anniversary of the establishment of the Nile Basin Initiative. We join the celebrations with twenty special wishes to the river and its people: happy birthday!

Who speaks for the river? We ask the question to Wubalem Fekade, head of communication at ENTRO-Nile Basin Initiative and to three journalists of the transboundary magazine The Niles: Esther Muwombi (Uganda), Elzahraa Jadallah (Sudan) and Rehab Abd Almohsen (Egypt).

Songs play a key role in reproducing Nile stories. Can music promote also dialogue and shared identities along the river? With Alia Mossallam, Egyptian researcher affiliated to the Alexander Von Humboldt Foundation at the Freie Universität in Berlin, and with Mina Girgis, ethnomusicologist and founder of The Nile Project.

How do international media and observers talk about the Nile? With Ana Cascao, independent researcher, and Alastair Leithead, BBC Africa correspondent, we question if the "water war" frame is the most appropriate to represent what is happening in the Nile basin.

This episode was recorded in Khartoum, where we met, among many others, Tamer Abd Alkreem, anthropologist at the University of Khartoum, and Omnia Shawkat, co-founder of the Sudanese digital magazine Andarya. They talk about the plurality of identities shaped by the Nile in Sudan, the competing interests that people have on the river, and how they are represented in the media.

Together with Linda Lilienfeld, director of the film festival Let's talk about water, and with Terje Tvedt, historian and filmmaker from the University of Oslo and Bergen, we discover the power of the video to make us looking at the Nile from new perspectives.

February 22, the day this podcast is launched, is Nile Day! We talk about media, science and Nile politics in Egypt with Rawia Tawfiq, political scientist at Cairo University, and Ayah Aman, journalist at Al Shorouk newspaper. Amidst many concerns for the Egyptian share of the Nile, they also point at positive steps that should be supported and celebrated.

We are joined by Iginio Gagliardone and Wondwosen Michago Seide to discuss the role that media and emotions play in framing the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam as a symbol of unity and development for Ethiopia.