Food & Climate
A former Egyptian minister predicted that the coming years will witness a drought, which could lead to direct confrontations between his country and Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which threatens Cairo’s water supply.
Former Minister of Water Resources Mohamed Nasr Allam (2009 to 2011) said on his Facebook page: “The dam will not cause harm to Egypt! Of course, the dam was built primarily (in my opinion) to harm Egypt and its water security, and even to attempt to sabotage the High Dam as a strategic water reserve for Egypt!!
Goals drawn up and planned since the 1950s, planned by the American Bureau of Reclamation, and supported by publicly available American reports published in 1964!!” He added.
“My personal prediction is that the coming years may witness years of drought, which could lead to direct confrontations that we neither hope for nor the international community desires to see. Therefore, everyone must awaken the Ethiopian leadership from their slumber before it’s too late. Peace, understanding, mutual benefit, and the absence of harm are what we desire. This is stipulated by international law. We hope to see this soon for the benefit of the Ethiopian people, Egypt, Sudan, the Nile Basin, and the Horn of Africa.”
Allam agrees with Egyptian-American space scientist Dr. Essam Heggy on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam crisis, who, in previous statements published by “Food & Climate” platform, indicated that the crisis in Egypt is not related to the construction of the dam, but rather to water allocations during droughts.
Egypt is one of the driest countries in the world and is threatened by further droughts. It relies on the Nile River for more than 95% of its water.
Controversy over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam
The controversy between Egypt and Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam has escalated again, as Addis Ababa prepares to inaugurate the largest project in Africa.
The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), a massive hydroelectric infrastructure built on the Blue Nile, will be officially inaugurated in September, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced on Monday. This project, which has been a major source of tension with Egypt and Sudan, is expected to eventually generate one billion dollars in annual revenue for Ethiopia.
Launched in 2011 at an estimated cost of 4 billion dollars, GERD is presented as the largest hydroelectric dam in Africa. It measures 1.8 kilometers in width and 145 meters in height, with a planned production capacity of 5,000 megawatts, double Ethiopia’s current capacity.
“We expect one billion dollars per year thanks to the dam. This money will be used to finance other projects,” said Abiy Ahmed in an interview broadcast on public media. He also promised similar future projects “in the next five, ten, or fifteen years,” asserting the country’s ability to fulfill its energy ambitions.
Located about thirty kilometers from the Sudanese border, the dam has raised concerns in Khartoum and Cairo, which have denounced it as a unilateral project threatening their water access.
A source of concern
“Many of our friends have expressed concerns; some even went so far as to threaten us before the UN Security Council,” the Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed recalled. “But the dam hasn’t caused Sudan or Egypt to lose a single drop of water. We do not want it to be a source of concern.”
Experts in Egypt confirm that the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam has not harmed the country so far, but that does not mean it poses no future threat.
While the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam represents an Ethiopian dream that the Ethiopians have rallied around and participated in financing, the dam represents a nightmare for Egypt and Sudan.
“Ethiopians may disagree on how to eat injera [their staple food], but they agree on the dam,” Moses Chrispus Okello, an analyst with the South Africa-based Institute for Security Studies think-tank, told the BBC.
“They do not see it as a pile of concrete in the middle of a river, but as a monument of their achievement because Ethiopians, both at home and in the diaspora, funded the dam’s construction. There were waves and waves of appeals for contributions when construction started in 2011.
But for Egypt, the dam represents the opposite of Ethiopia’s hopes and ambitions.
It fears that dam could sharply reduce the flow of water to the country, causing water shortages.
“About 93% of Egypt is desert, with almost no people. All of us, 107 million people, live on the Nile,” a geologist at Egypt’s Cairo University, Prof Abbas Sharaky, told the BBC.
“Egyptian civilisation was built on the Nile. The Nile is our life,” he added.
The academic warns that “poverty of water” could worsen in Egypt because of the dam.
“It is storing 64 billion cubic metres, from water which usually flows to Egypt. This is a very big loss for us. Our average annual share is 55.5 billion cubic metres. We do not have any other source of water, but the Nile,” Prof Sharaky said.