Agriculture is the primary economic activity in all riparian countries of the Nile Basin.
The Nile river at 6825 kilometers is the longest river in the world. It comprises two major tributaries, the White Nile and the Blue Nile.
The White Nile rises in the Greta Lakes region of Central Africa, with the most distant source in southern Rwanda and flows north from there through Tanzania, Lake Victoria, Uganda and southern Sudan.
The Blue Nile starts at Lake Tana in Ethiopia and flows into Sudan from the southeast.
The two rivers meet near the Sudanese capital, Khartoum.
The Nile River Basin is home to approximately 180 millions people and they live in rural areas and dependent on agriculture.
The Nile river is the main source of water for Egypt, supplying Egypt with around 95 percent of its water.
The agriculture sector consumes at least 80 percent of Egyptian water, while municipalities and industry consume around 20 percent.
In Egypt and also Sudan, irrigated agriculture is the dominant sector. Over 5.5 million hectares are under irrigation, with plans to further irrigate an area of over 4.9 million hectares.
In Ethiopia, the potential identified in the Blue Nile Basin include 100,000 hectares of perennial irrigation and 165,000 hectares of small scale seasonal irrigation.
Irrigation has been practiced throughout the Nile valley from the earliest times. The present system of barrages and canals was built between the 1860s and 1930s and later expanded to serve the needs of newly lands in the valley and newly reclaimed lands on both sides of the Nile delta.
Agriculture at the Nile River Basin
