The Nile Equatorial Lakes Subsidiary Action Program Coordination Unit (NELSAP-CU) headquartered in Kigali, Rwanda, is one of the two investment programs of the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI), the other being the Eastern Nile Subsidiary Action Program (ENSAP) headquartered in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia known as Eastern Nile Technical Regional Office (ENTRO). NELSAP-CU was established in December 1999 by the Council of Ministers for Water Affairs in the Nile River Basin, with a mission to “contribute to the eradication of poverty, promote economic growth, and reverse environmental degradation in the Nile Equatorial Lakes (NEL) region, within the overall NBI’s shared Vision of sustainable socioeconomic development and the equitable use of and benefit from Nile Basin water resources”.

NELSAP-CU is governed and reports to the Council of Water Ministers from 10 Nile Basin membership states of Burundi, DR Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. Within its mandate, NELSAP-CU facilitates jointly agreed transformative in-country projects with regional impact/significance and trans-boundary cooperative investment projects related to the common use of the Nile Basin water resources. It also builds regional capacity of countries and provides a platform for implementation coordination of trans– boundary investment projects.

NELSAP-CU renders support to national initiatives and focuses on two investment areas of:

1. Power development and trade, and
2. NAtuaral resources management and development

NELSAP-CU has prepared a number of cooperative in country and regional trans-boundary projects, which are at various levels of preparation and implementation. NELSAP-CU has mobilized finances for pre-investment and investment projects cumulatively totaling to USD 1.050 billion (pre-investment USD 557.107 million and for investment projects USD 493.018 million).

Since 2014, NELSAP-CU has gained regional experience, strengthened its capacity and emerged as a reliable regional institution for facilitating key in country and regional investment projects in the Nile Equatorial Lakes Region and beyond. Its key institutional strength lies in project pre-investment feasibility studies, regional projects coordination support, regional strategic analysis, environmental aspects, social economic development, stakeholders’ engagement and development communication, financial and procurement management as well as results based monitoring and evaluation.

NELSAP-CU, in delivering on its mandate, is supported bilaterally and multilaterally by different development partners including, but not limited to, the World Bank, the African Development Bank (AfDB), the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the Governments of Norway (NORAD), Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), the Government of The Netherlands, the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), GIZ (Germany), French Development Agency (AFD), European Union(EU) and KfW (Germany).

NELSAP SUB-PROGRAMS:

1. Water Resources Management and Development Sub-program
2. Power Development and Trade Sub-program