Ethiopia announced this Sunday that it has completed the filling of the Grand Renaissance Dam, a megaproject on a tributary of the Nile River that threatens to reignite regional tensions over water with its neighbors Egypt and Sudan, who are further down the river. The news sparked swift condemnation from Egypt, which denounced the filling as illegal.
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Ethiopia’s announcement came just 15 days after the three countries resumed negotiations, after a long pause, on an agreement that takes into account the water needs of all three nations.
Egypt and Sudan fear the massive $4.2 billion dam will severely reduce the proportion of Nile water they receive and have repeatedly called on Addis Ababa to stop filling it until everyone has reached an agreement on how it should work.
“It is with great pleasure to announce the successful completion of the fourth and final filling of the Renaissance Dam,” Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said on X, formerly Twitter.
“There were many challenges. Many times we were dragged back. We had internal challenge and external pressure. We have reached (this stage) by uniting with God,” Abiy said. “I think we’ll finish what we have planned next,” he added.
The Ethiopian government communications service said in X that the dam, possibly the largest in Africa, was “a gift for generations.”
“Today’s heroic generation will build tomorrow’s strong Ethiopia on a solid foundation,” he continued.
Egypt’s Foreign Ministry condemned as “illegal” the news that Ethiopia had filled its Grand Nile Renaissance Dam.
Addis Ababa’s “unilateral” move to complete the filling of the mega-dam would “weigh” on negotiations with Egypt and Sudan, which were suspended in 2021 but resumed last month, according to a statement from the Egyptian Ministry.
At full capacity, the huge hydroelectric dam (1.8 kilometers long and 145 meters high) could generate more than 5,000 megawatts annually.
This would double Ethiopia’s electricity production, which currently only half of the country’s population of 120 million has access to.
An existential threat to Egypt and Sudan
Sudan did not immediately react to the announcement. However, the dam has been at the center of a regional dispute since Ethiopia began construction of the project in 2011.
Negotiations between the three governments, which resumed in Cairo on August 27 after almost two and a half years of stalemate, aim to reach an agreement that “takes into account the interests and concerns of” the three nations, said the Egyptian Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation, Hani Sewilam, who called for “an end to unilateral measures.”
Egypt, already suffering from severe water shortages, sees the dam as an existential threat because it depends on the Nile for 97% of its water needs.
The position of fragile Sudan, currently mired in civil war, has fluctuated in recent years.
Ethiopia has said that the Gerd, which is located in the northwest of the country, about 30 kilometers from the border with Sudan, will not reduce the volume of water flowing downstream.
The United Nations said Egypt could “run out of water by 2025” and parts of Sudan, where the Darfur conflict was essentially a war over access to water, are increasingly vulnerable to drought as a result of climate change.
AFP
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