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To inform
and educate
The Nile
Like wrote Hérodote, "Egypt
is a gift of the Nile".
The Nile crosses Egypt right through, and
irrigates a fertile valley which covers
33000 km² (surface of Belgium) is less
than 4% of the million Km² of surface
of the country.
Famous in the past for its spectacular risings
as well destroying as saving (that irrigated
all the valley and brought the fertile silt),
the Nile is dyed today never again of red
during the rain season. Indeed, its flow
is controlled by the stopping of Aswan which
ensures the river a constant flow upstream
even for the periods of great dryness (Sudan,
Ethiopia, Kenya, Erythrée, Tanzania,
Uganda, Congo, Rwanda, Burundi).
In Egypt, the Nile does not receive any
contribution of water, the country is in
fact a large desert crossed by a giant river.
90% of the population (66.900.000 inhabitants)
live along this thin fertile band finishing
in an immense delta which has a maritime
face of 250 km.
The Nile and Egyptians = agriculture
Agriculture occupies 51% of the working
population, it is still the spinal column
of Egyptian industry.
Under Nasser, the grounds were redistributed,
with the result that each fellah (farmer)
has on average ½ hectares of irrigated
grounds.
On these grounds, they are able to carry
out two, even three harvests per annum thanks
to the irrigation and with the fertility
of the silts which were deposited by the
Nile with the court of the centuries of
raw having preceded construction by the
stopping of Aswan.
The first production of the country is cotton,
follow the cane to sugar, corn, rice and
the corn (whose production increases in
order to arrive at self-sufficiency).
Always Pharaonic projects
To increase cultivable surfaces, president
Mubarak (since 22 years) launched several
programs of irrigations whose Toshka (close
of Abu Simbel in the south of the country
to 40 km of the border with Sudan) is without
any most spectacular doubt.
He will make it possible to irrigate 500
000 ha with a channel of 320 km Toshka to
the lake Nasser.
Water pumped in the lake Nasser (25 million
m3/day), it is the greatest station of the
pumping of the world. Channel and pumping
finished in 2001. Cost: 1,3 billion euro.
The school where we understood the importance
of water and included tin children's education
The school Naguib Mahfouz is a French-speaking
experimental school. The project of this
school was conceived by the Egyptian government.
In order to help the school, France detaches
a person full-time to train the professors.
The school is directed by the dynamics Fawzya
Mohamed Mitwally which very nicely allowed
us to meet the pupils and the professors
working specifically on the topic of water.
Among them, the assistant director and the
professor of science presented the child
work to us. Among them, luckiest went to
the International Crossroads of the messengers
of water.
Here the charter that all the children of
the world worked out there.
The charter of water
Water:
- a fundamental need for the LIFE,
- a common inheritance for all the beings,
- a threatened natural richness,
- a resource unequally accessible and distributed.
Present in all the religions and all the
myths, inspirer of the artists, bienfaitrice,
magic, water welds the communities and connects
the men.
Water lives in us and around us.
Let us be conscious of its rights. It must
remain allied.
In "school space", you will be
able to appreciate the drawings which the
Egyptian children carried out for water,
the poem like two recommendations for the
safeguarding of water.
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