Egypt alarm an “existential threat”, while Ethiopia sees it as a regional “opportunity”. The “mega dam” in the Nile built by Ethiopia, which must be inaugurated on September 9, is a source of tensions between the two African countries for more than a decade.
The great Renaissance dam (EGE), a source of pride in Ethiopia, is one of the rare issues that are unanimous in this country destroyed by several armed conflicts, still active in the two most populated regions of the country, Amhara and Oromia. The Tigri was released in 2022 from a civil war that left at least 600,000 dead, according to an estimate of the African Union.
In social networks, the images of the dam, decorated with the Ethiopian flag, are the legion as the inauguration approaches. Both the TPLF, the Tigerian party, in power until 2018, and Abiy’s party that happened to him to assign merit. In a “difficult region” and in view of the “increase in internal political fragility”, the Ethiopian government “seeks to use the dam and confrontation with its neighbors as a unit of unity,” explains Alex Vines, of the European Council of International Relations (ECFR).
Mediation attempts
The first stone of EGE, a great work of 1.8 km wide for 145 meters high, with a total capacity of 74 billion cubic meters of water, has been established in April 2011. Since then, the project has been in the heart of a great regional geopolitical game. Cairo criticizes it abruptly, which, for fear of drying its main source of water supply, the hammers that constitute an “existential threat.”
Egypt, a country of around 110 million inhabitants, depends on the Nile for 97% of its water needs, especially for agriculture. According to its Ministry of Water Resources, the arid country now has 59.6 billion cubic meters of the precious liquid, when 114 billion are necessary.
The Egyptian executive recently approached the two border countries of Ethiopia: Eritrea, who today maintains tense relations with Addis Abeba and Somalia. Sudan has also expressed concern. With Cairo, they reiterated at the end of June “their rejection of any unilateral measure in the Blue Nile Basin.” Several mediation attempts for a decade among the three countries, under the successively auspices of the United States, the World Bank, Russia, the United Arab Emirates and the African Union, have failed.
Ethiopia, which should see its double electricity production thanks to frost, is reassuring. “The energy and development that will generate will contribute not only to the boom in Ethiopia, but also to the entire region. The Assouan dam, in Egypt, has never lost a single liter of water due to the ege,” said Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in July. A speech repeated on Monday during a television interview.
“There is no other alternative”
A peaceful cohabitation of the Nile residents, note notes, is very possible. “The Nile is enough for all upstream and downstream countries if it is handled correctly,” says Abel Abate Demissie, researcher at the Chatham House Reflection Group. An open conflict between Ethiopia and Egypt is, in fact, “unlikely,” according to the various researchers interviewed.
Even if the subject has an impact on the “internal stability” of Egypt, because a significant decrease in the water supply would have an impact on the stability of the country, both political and economic and social, points out that the water expert Mohey Mohey El-Deen, former member of the Egyptian committee for the evaluation of the head. But with the inauguration next week in the book, “the only realistic option for Egypt is to adapt,” he says. “There is no other alternative,” he said.
Source: BFM TV
