Major conflicts in Africa over the next 25 years could be due to that most precious of commodities — water.

Water wars are likely to erupt in areas where rivers and lakes are shared by more than one country, according to a United Nations Development Programme report.

Possible flashpoints are the Nile, Niger, Volta and Zambezi basins. The report predicts population growth and economic development will lead to nearly one in two people in Africa living in countries facing water scarcity or ‘water stress’ within 25 years.

Water scarcity is defined as less than 1,000 cubic metres of the precious liquid available per person per year, while water stress means that less than 1,500 cubic metres are available annually per individual.

The report says that by 2025, 12 more African countries will join the 13 that already suffer from water stress or water scarcity.

Lester Brown, the influential head of the environmental research institute Worldwatch believes that water scarcity is now "the single biggest threat to global food security".

He adds: "There is already little water left when the Nile reaches the sea."

At least 10 countries in Africa could revert to armed conflict because of the Nile waters. The root of the problem is two agreements signed during the colonial era — the 1929 Nile Water Agreement and the 1959 Agreement for the Full Utilisation of the Nile — that gave Egypt and Sudan extensive rights over the river’s use.

Upstream countries, including Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, have expressed concern over the long-standing arrangements, arguing the treaties have given Egypt unfair control over the use of the river’s waters. None of the colonial treaties involved all the riparian countries and, therefore, did not cater for their interests, they say.

Countries in East Africa say they want to abrogate the treaties, which they regard as outmoded colonial relics. They say the agreements completely ignore the interests of the other countries in the Basin. But Egypt, a well-armed country by any standards, says any attempt to alter or violate the treaty will be regarded as an act of war.

Undeterred, in February last year, Tanzania launched a $27.6 billion project to draw drinking water from Lake Victoria in contravention of the treaties. Kenya, also short of water, is pushing for the treaties to be revised.

A Ugandan MP, Amon Muzoora, in 2002 moved a Motion in Parliament for the country to renounce the pre-independence Nile water agreements. He made claims for an annual compensation of $1.2 million.

Uganda needs hydroelectric power to solve its energy problems. Ethiopia has long desired to start large-scale irrigation projects to counter endemic drought which has left 13 million people hungry.

In 1980, Egypt threatened war with Ethiopia after the latter’s President Mengistu Haile Mariam opposed attempts by the former’s leader, Anwar Sadat, to divert waters to the Sinai Desert.

Lester predicts that even today, Egypt is unlikely to take kindly to losing out to Ethiopia — a country with one-tenth of its income. Indeed, water is already a catalyst for regional conflict.

Egypt is the country with most at stake in the water wars. The arid country has virtually no other source of fresh water. However, other countries argue that Egypt and Sudan are already making use of the Nile for commercial purposes including water exports and growing cash crops.

In the last decade, efforts towards cooperation in the Nile basin have intensified. In 1993, the Technical Cooperation Committee for the Promotion of the Development and Environmental Protection of the Nile Basin was established with the aim of promoting a development agenda.

In the same year, the first in a series of Nile 2002 Conferences, supported by the Canadian International Development Agency took place. Within the framework of the cooperation committee, the Nile River Basin Action Plan was prepared in 1995. In 1997, the World Bank, UNDP and the Canadian International Development Agency began working as ‘cooperating partners’ to facilitate further dialogue among the Nile’s riparian states.

In 1998, all the riparian states except Eritrea began discussions with the aim of creating a regional partnership to better manage the Nile. A transitional mechanism for cooperation was officially launched in February 1999 in Dar es Salaam by the Council of Ministers of Water Affairs of the Nile Basin States (Nile-COM). The process was named the Nile Basin Initiative later in the same year and in November 2002, a secretariat was established in Entebbe, Uganda, with funding from the World Bank.

Burundi, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya and Rwanda are all involved in the NBI, with Eritrea being an observer.

According to Antoine Sendama, one of the Nile Basin Initiative’s regional coordinators, the 10 countries which share the Nile and its sources met to find a way of using the Nile "sustainably and effectively towards development". Fresh water is also becoming increasingly unusable because of pollution. Given Africa’s increasing population, Worldwatch says that one way of easing the demand for water is importing grain.

Agriculture is by far the biggest consumer of water in Africa, accounting for 88 per cent of usage. It takes about 1,000 tonnes of water to produce a tonne of grain. According to Worldwatch, the water needed to produce the annual combined imports of grain by the Middle East and North Africa is equivalent to the annual flow of the Nile.

Importing grain is much easier than importing water, but for poorer countries in Africa, it may not be an option. For this reason the UN proposes monitoring worldwide reserves of drinking water and establishing agreements for the use of the precious commodity.