URANIUM POTENTIALITIES IN THE NILE BASIN COUNTRIES 

Abstract

River Nile Basin Countries (RNBC) are sharing together water from the great Nile River and its tributaries and upper Nile lakes. They have, in general, similar major geologic and structural features within the African carton. These countries include: Egypt, Sudan, Southern Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea,Congo, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania.Based on the nature of the geologic provinces in RNBC, it is evident that most of these countries have good potentialities for hosting uranium resources. Moreover, some of these countries include economic uranium deposits, uranium occurrences and or radioactive anomalies.The Archean rocks which form the back bone of African craton have a good potentiality for hosting unconformity related uranium - type deposit. The Pan-African Granites and the associated acidic volcanics are favor rocks for including vein type uranium resources. Intra-cratonic basins, which represent prominent structural features in the East Africa Region, can be considered as important entrapment structures for uranium deposits. The volcanic activities through the East Africa Region in the various episodes have a remarkable role in redistribution of uranium in many geologic formations. The Phanerozoic sedimentary successions have certain horizons with good uranium bearing strata.

*Presented in Geology of the Nile Basin Conference (GNBCC-2012) as invited talk., Alexandria, Egypt, 20-23 March,2012)