Egypt and Water Science Diplomacy: Implications of Establishing the UNESCO Chair

Dr Ammar Abkar Abdullah
On the evening of Thursday, 12 March 2026, Egypt’s National Water Research Centre, affiliated with the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation, hosted the signing ceremony for the establishment of a UNESCO Chair on the Management and Governance of Transboundary Waters.
This step highlights the importance of combining science and diplomacy in managing shared water resources between countries. The ceremony was hosted by the Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation, Dr Hani Sewilam, and attended by Dr Badr Abdel Aty, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Emigration and Egyptian Expatriates Affairs, and Dr Abdel Aziz Konsowa, Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research and Chair of the Egyptian National Commission for UNESCO, alongside officials, experts and researchers specialising in water issues.
The establishment of this Chair represents a strategic step that reflects Egypt’s and the international community’s recognition of the need to integrate scientific research into political decision-making in the management of shared water basins. Transboundary waters are no longer merely a technical matter; they have become a strategic issue intersecting scientific, legal, political and developmental considerations.
The launch of this Chair comes at a time of increasing challenges within the Nile River Basin, one of the largest shared river basins in the world. The basin covers approximately 3.4 million square kilometres. It includes 11 countries: Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Eritrea, an observer state. More than 300 million people depend on the Nile’s waters, directly or indirectly.
The importance of scientific cooperation within the basin has become particularly evident over the past decade, especially in light of developments surrounding the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), which began construction in 2011 on the Blue Nile and has a storage capacity of approximately 74 billion cubic metres of water. These developments have underscored the need for scientific and institutional approaches based on data exchange, knowledge sharing, and dialogue among riparian states to manage shared rivers.
UNESCO Chairs serve as international platforms for promoting scientific research, capacity building and knowledge exchange between universities and research centres worldwide. The UNESCO Chairs Programme, launched in 1992, now includes more than 850 academic chairs in around 120 countries, covering fields such as education, science, environment and engineering.
The significance of this Chair is not limited to the Nile River alone. It also extends to other strategic water resources, including the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System, one of the world’s largest transboundary groundwater reservoirs. The aquifer covers approximately 2.2 million square kilometres across four countries—Sudan, Egypt, Libya and Chad—and its groundwater reserves are estimated at around 150,000 cubic kilometres of deep fossil water.
Regional cooperation efforts regarding this aquifer date back to the 1990s, when a cooperative mechanism among the four countries was established in 1992. These efforts culminated in the signing of a framework cooperation agreement in 2013, aimed at strengthening coordination in scientific research, data exchange and the management of this strategic resource.
International experience clearly demonstrates that science can serve as a bridge for cooperation and confidence-building among states. When accurate scientific knowledge and shared data are available, potential disputes can be transformed into opportunities for cooperation and mutual benefit.
This highlights the importance of what may be termed “water science diplomacy”, where scientific research and diplomatic engagement converge to produce practical and sustainable solutions to challenges related to shared water resources. Science provides the objective foundation for understanding and analysis, while diplomacy translates that understanding into policies and agreements that promote stability and development.
For Sudan, such initiatives represent an important opportunity to engage in research, training and scientific cooperation networks related to the management of transboundary water resources. They also underscore the need to strengthen the presence of Sudanese academic and research institutions within such international platforms, thereby contributing to the development of national expertise in hydrology and water governance, and enhancing the country’s capacity to support its technical and diplomatic positions on regional water issues.
In conclusion, the future of cooperation in the Nile Basin and shared groundwater systems will not depend solely on political negotiations. It will increasingly be shaped by states’ ability to produce shared scientific knowledge and to employ it in support of political decision-making. When political will is combined with science and knowledge, and decisions are grounded in evidence and reliable data, the prospects for cooperation improve, and the chances of reaching fair and sustainable solutions for managing shared water resources increase significantly—serving the interests of the peoples of the region and future generations alike.

Shortlink: https://sudanhorizon.com/?p=12093