Development plan along Lake Nasser unfair to Egyptian Nubians
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Nubians, now numbering about 3 million of Egypt’s 73 million people, have been leaving their stretch of the Nile valley for more than a century — some because of poverty, some because of efforts to tame the river’s annual floods. The first dam near Aswan was built in 1902; subsequent ones obliterated settlements further and further south until all of Egyptian Nubia was under water.
In 1964, their shoreline was inundated when the Aswan High Dam created Lake Nasser, the world’s largest reservoir. Now the Egyptian government plans to settle northern Egyptians along Lake Nasser without reserving space for Nubians. More recently, newspapers reported plans for agricultural and tourist developments on about 300,000 acres. Some of the space would be designated for foreign investors, the rest would be for domestic developers — with nothing for Nubians. Activists in the ethnic minority say no fair: They want terrain set aside for new villages so their brethren can live again on the Nile, returning from a northern Egypt diaspora and arid settlements established 44 years ago for displaced families.
Nubians once ruled Egypt in pharaonic times, their armies having ousted Libyan invaders. They speak their own, non-Arabic language and sing their songs to drum beats. The Nile was their economic lifeblood and fountain of memory, identity and lore.
Excerpted from an article by Daniel Williams for bloomberg.com
