ABSTRACT
The Nile River and its basin, a home to diversely contrasting ecology, political creeds and economic order, the unfailing spectacle that yielded precious waters since the dawn of human history, entrenches between 4°S in the equatorial region and 31°N in the Mediterranean. It constitutes a territorial contiguity of varying sizes in eleven north, north-eastern and central African countries — Egypt, Sudan, South Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania and Congo. Across several districts, no clearly marked water shade exists, and surveys of its outer-most reach remain varied, but generally, the drainage ensconces over an estimated catchment area of 2.9–3.5 million sq.km. In a unique blend of topography, the Nile basin exhibits stretches of land covered by vegetation widely ranging from dense equatorial and tropical rainforests to rain-flooded grasslands, woodlands, papyrus and the scanty arid desert scrubs. A great deal of provinces along the equator and the high plateaus receive continual rainfall for several months of the year; the precipitation and density of the vegetation drastically trifles toward the north.
