Roach, S.C.; Hudson, D.K. and Demerew, K. (Eds). 2025. Nile basin politics: From coordinated to cooperative peace. Edward Elgar. Print ISBN: 9781803927169, 192 p., £80.
(URL: https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/nile-basin-politics-9781803927169.html)
Ana Elise Cascão
To cite this Review: Cascão, A.E. (2025). Nile basin politics: From coordinated to cooperative peace, E-Elgar. 2025, by S.C. Roach et al., Water Alternatives, http://www.water-alternatives.org/index.php/boh/item/392-nile3
Terje Tvedt is a Norwegian historian and geographer who has spent most of his life studying water and notably rivers, around the world. This book testifies how the Nile holds a special place in his endeavour, and how, when it comes to the relation between water and society, the Nile has shaped human history, practices, and understanding beyond the physical borders of its basin.
The book is a biography of the Nile across space and time. The journey begins from the river delta in Egypt up to its multiple sources in Ethiopia, Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda. It spans from the construction of the first Egyptian infrastructures to control the Nile flood four thousand years ago, to that of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam initiated in 2011.
At the beginning of the book, Terje Tvedt reveals that in his journeys along the Nile he always carries a copy of “The History of Herodotus”. The ancient Greek historian and traveller seems more than a mere route companion. Tvedt follows his approach and methodology that combines archival research with travelling, observing landscapes and life, and talking to people. In doing so, Tvedt takes Herodotus iconic say “Egypt is the gift of the Nile” as a source of inspiration, turning it into a systematic analysis of the relations between the river’s hydrology, the institutions and infrastructures developed to govern its waters, and the political, cultural and symbolic meanings that people attach to it.
Throughout his journey along the Nile, Tvedt connects the big history of ancient kingdoms, colonial empires, revolutions, nationalist and modernist political projects, with individual stories of explorers, writers, engineers, entrepreneurs, singers, farmers... This includes curious anecdotes like a giraffe sailing downriver from Cairo up to Europe, or a pyramid built by a German explorer at the sources of the Nile in Burundi to recall how the river connects places that seem so afar. By highlighting water’s contribution in shaping human history and society, Tvedt brings new insights and perspectives to classic debates in historiography, like the strategy of European and particularly British colo
Many books have been written about the Nile for almost as long as the river has existed. With the development of new technology and the rapid expansion of agricultural land since the beginning of the 20th century, the Nile became increasingly politicized, and conflicts – or their potential – became a central theme in the literature. Towards the end of the century, with increasing attempts to establish multilateralism over unilateralism, the literature turned to cooperation – or its potential. This shifted in 2011, when two major events upended pre-defined and static ideas of hydropolitical relations. On the one hand, upstream countries adopted the multilateral framework agreement – the Cooperative Framework Agreement (CFA); simultaneously, Ethiopia launched a large-scale unilateral project – the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). These were two opposite trends.
This book, published in early 2025, is a timely and valuable contribution to the current debate, in which several authors analyse the events and trends shaping the Nile Basin. The edited volume brings together a range of expert perspectives, paying significant attention to the GERD, as it represents the major tipping point in Nile politics ever since the High Aswan Dam in the 1970s. Firstly, the book offers insights into detailed technical and coordination issues, specifically hose addressed during the negotiations between the ‘big three’ (Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan), as the authors call them. Secondly, the book examines the Nile and the GERD from several political angles. An important one – too often overlooked – is the relevance of domestic politics in each country's hydropolitical conduct. This has been previously documented in the case of Egypt, but this book contributes with insights into Ethiopia’s case. Unfortunately, Sudan is given limited analysis throughout the book, and none of the authors is from Sudan, a notable gap in an otherwise diverse set of viewpoints.
However, the book's primary contribution to the literature is to look beyond the basin (be it domestic or regional politics) to understand the role of external actors as enablers and/or spoilers of cooperation in the Nile region. The authors discuss the constructive role that external partners have played in supporting the technical track of cooperation – the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) since the 1990s, but also their reluctance to support the legal track of cooperation – the CFA – because of Egypt’s opposition to it. Furthermore, the book zooms in on the external intervention in the GERD negotiations, particularly in the 2019-2020 period when the US administration became intimately involved as a de facto mediator in the high-profile negotiation process. It provides an interesting analysis of how US own strategic self-interests have informed the GERD negotiations. The book analyses hydropolitical shifts, showing that a blend of complex domestic nationalisms, regional geopolitics and external intervention have hindered cooperative attempts. The final chapter presents an innovative analysis of the Nile region's medium to long-term future, proposing a strategic grasp of ow energy-food security interdependence has the potential to enable countries to overcome past and current nationalist deadlocks and forge an integrated political economy in the region and beyond.
The book deploys hydro-hegemony and counter-hydro-hegemony theoretical frameworks to analyse the trajectory of hydropolitical relations, showing how political power is key to shaping cooperation and negotiations. However, the conclusion is not entirely clear and raises some key questions. Does the current situation represents counter-hegemony by upstreamers overcoming Egypt’s long-standing hegemonic position? Can this be measured only by the fact that the GERD has been built and finalized and that Egypt had to accept it regardless? Or was it mainly an attempt to overthrow Egypt’s hegemony with limited results, given its geopolitical importance from the perspective of external partners? Finally, by 2025, is there a more balanced regional power dynamic, and are the countries more prone to cooperate now that an upstream country has proven it can indeed build mega-infrastructure? The book's one significant shortcoming is a missing concluding chapter summarizing the main takeaways regarding hegemony and counter-hegemony, and what ultimately means in pragmatic political terms. A stronger synthesis would have powerfully consolidated its insightful analysis, but the volume remains an essential read to understand the modern geopolitics of the Nile.
