White Nile Map of Sudan

The Nile River can be considered the river that was venerated and became a part of ancient civilization, mythology, and our contemporary geopolitical tendencies. Such unequivocal length renders it more significant than any other river on the planet, being the particular aspect of the African continent that supports millions of inhabitants within multiple nations. The White Nile is one of two great tributaries distinguished not only by its hydrological importance but by various social/political and environmental concerns that encompass it. It began in deep central Africa and flows across different landscapes, becoming an essential lifeline to societies, ecosystems and countries along its course.

The White Nile is the outflow of Lake Victoria near Jinja, Uganda, although hydrologically, to the Nile's source, the Nile would be traced to the headwaters of the Nyungwe Forest, Rwanda, which drains into Lake Victoria by the Rukarara River in a series of connecting waterways. The river flows out of Lake Victoria and into Uganda in the form of the Victoria Nile crossing through Lake Kyoga and Lake Albert before flowing into South Sudan as the White Nile. The river passes through extensive wetlands in South Sudan, the greatest of these being the Sudd, one of the largest and most important swamps in the planet. The river crosses into Sudan and finally discharges into the blue Nile at Khartoum to create the Nile proper which flows to the Mediterranean Sea in Egypt.

The geographic route through which the White Nile flows shows great diversity in terms of ecosystems.It traverses equatorial rain forest, savannah and semi-arid plains. Its somewhat smooth flow, as compared with the stormier Blue Nile, is due partly to the buffering action of the Great Lakes and the marshlands of South Sudan, which counter-check the yearly variations. This hydrological stability matters to the countries in the down-stream and even more in the dry season where there is less abnormality in the flow of the Blue Nile. The White Nile consequently plays a leading role in maintaining the perennial system of the Nile River, upholding agriculture, human habitation, and ecosystems.

The historical background of the source of the primeval White Nile has long been a fascination of European explorers and colonial administrations in the nineteenth century. The so-called Scramble of Africa was accompanied by a wave of expeditions, attempts to solve the geographical riddle of the origin of the Nile, which had bothered the minds of scientists since ancient times. Large lakes or mountains within the very center of Africa had been speculated earlier by classical geographers like Ptolemy as the possible origin. Lake Victoria was discovered as the major reservoir of the White Nile not until the scientific discoveries of John Hanning Speke and Richard Burton in the 1850s and 1860s. When Speke discovered where the lake emptied, namely the Ripon Falls, a breakthrough in the exploration of the Nile occurred, although long controversy was there for years as to whether this water was truly the source of the Nile.

The fascination of the European people with the river was not a small scientific one, but it was inextricably tied to imperial concerns too. The Nile and its tributaries were considered to be the keys to obtaining political control over the region. In their overall geopolitical strategy in the northeastern region of Africa, British colonial powers especially emphasized dominion of the Nile basin. That concentration led to the conclusion with a series of bilateral accords, such as the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1929 and the Nile Waters agreement between Egypt and Sudan in 1959 that divided most of the Nile River waters between the two downstream parties. These accords grossly neglected the needs of upstream countries including entrepreneurs through which the White Nile cuts like Uganda, Rwanda and South Sudan.

The White River is relatively calm, in contrast to the Blue Nile that also deposits most of the sediment and the seasonal floodwaters that define the river in Egypt and northern Sudan. It delivers fewer sediments, but gives a more reliable supply of volumetric flow during the year.

One of the major characteristics of the route made along the White Nile is the Sudd, a vast swampy area that is around 130,000 square kilometers in size during the rainy season. The Sudd represents a serious natural hydrological problem, capturing and losing a large amount of the White Nile water, and likely taking 30 to 50 percent of its flow. Although this wetland plays a critical ecological role in supporting biodiversity and has served as a carbon sink, it has been considered as a hindrance to effective water utilization by some engineers and planners. In the 1970s and 1980s attempts to prevent the loss of water to the Sudd focused on the Jonglei Canal project which would have diverted the river into the swamp. However, this project was halted when the civil war in Sudan broke out at the start of the year and has not been completed yet. Canal as such is still subject to dispute, particularly due to the concerns it presents to local residents and the environment.

In 2011 with the independence of South Sudan there was a newly created riparian state with independence over a major stretch of the river. This caused great changes in the hydropolitical situation in the Nile Basin.

Water agreements that existed during the colonial era still dominate the regional dynamics. An example is Egypt which has long maintained a very robust stance on the upholding of the assigned share of the Nile waters on the grounds of existential threats to the upheld share cascading regardless of the perceived reduction. This has caused friction not only with the upstream White Nile countries, but also with Ethiopia, regarding the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the Blue Nile. Although the White Nile does not, or cannot, add to the total volume of the river as the Blue Nile, it is a significant component of the river system, especially at low flow times.

These efforts to achieve collaboration between nations within the Nile Basin have decisively taken the shape of the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) initiated in 1999. The NBI aims at promoting equal and sustainable control of Niles resources via discussion and joint participation in development process.This does not imply that the possibility is being achieved of establishing, on a general basis, control of the entire basin since, despite the fact that it has only enabled some improvements in technical cooperation, and in the exchange of information, there is still weighing in the air the debates related to the rights to water.

Besides having a geopolitical and environmental value, the White Nile also has a major cultural value. The river becomes not merely a topography in some of the thousands of civilizations on its path, but a part and parcel of the rhythm of daily life, the spiritual doctrines, and records of history. It is dependent on the waters through the traditional livelihood practices of fishing, pastoralism, and flood-recession farming. In addition, the river provided a free trade route and communication line across centuries as a medium of exchange between people of different cultures, speaking different languages.

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