January 27, 2000
DAKAR, Senegal (PANA) - Plans are underway to build pipelines to transport water to the Middle East and southern Africa from the Congo River in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The project, initiated in 1999, seeks to build a 2000-km pipe via Port-Sudan to the Middle East while a 1,000-km pipe will go down via the Delta of Okavango in Angola and Namibia, according to a news release from the initiators.
The release said the project was initiated by a joint venture between Western Trade Corporation, a Congolese company based in Kinshasa, and Sapphire Aqua Corporation, a US firm based in Florida.
The project is known as the Solomon Pipelines.
The release said Western Trade Corporation was given the rights by the Congolese government to build and operate the pipelines to deliver the much-needed water to those two arid regions.
"Water will be given free as a humanitarian gesture by the Democratic Republic of Congo government to help alleviate the dangerous political tensions in those regions caused by the critical scarcity of water and to promote world peace," it added.
The Congo river water is expected to off-set Israel's water scarcity after the return of the Golan Heights to Syria. The Golan Heights provide 40 percent of all the water used in Israel.
"Israel and Jordan are high on the list of water-scare nations where the potential for continued conflict in the Jordan River valley is no longer a question," according to the release.
Upon its completion, at 25 m3 per second in phase I with production increasing to 200 m3 per second as demand dictates, the Solomon pipelines will bring a solution, in a very near future, to the water-related problems.
According to the release, the project will cost in billions of dollars and will generate thousands of jobs for local economies in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central Africa Republic, Sudan, Angola, Botswana and Namibia.
It will also generate huge business opportunities such as electricity and communications supplies from the Inga and the Mobayi-Bongo dams, and fiber optics along the toll ways that will be positioned along the pipelines.
Social and environmental development programmes, such as the building of churches, mosques, hospitals, parks, housing, commercial centres and schools, are envisaged under the vast water project.