Issue No. 292

 

In a triumphant parliamentary address at the beginning of July, Ethiopian PM Abiy Ahmed announced that the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) was finally complete. After well over a decade and USD 4.2 billion spent, GERD is the largest hydroelectric dam on the continent– stretching over a mile wide and 140 metres high in Ethiopia's western Benishangul-Gumuz region on the Blue Nile tributary. And with preparations underway for a likely lavish official inauguration in September, Abiy also took the opportunity to invite the leaders of downstream Egypt and Sudan. Striking a conciliatory tone, Abiy pledged that "the Renaissance Dam is not a threat, but a shared opportunity" and asserted "Egypt's Aswan Dam has never lost a single litre of water due to the GERD." However, for over a decade, fitful negotiations between the now-ruined Khartoum, Cairo, and Addis on the GERD made little progress, and since 2020, relations between Ethiopia and Egypt over the use of the Nile water basin have become increasingly strained. And against a backdrop of rising likelihood of conflict between Ethiopia and Cairo-allied Eritrea, the completion of GERD raises the temperature further in a region already ablaze.

Abiy's parliamentary address may have been framed as conciliatory, but Cairo certainly did not receive it as such. It quickly summoned Sudanese army commander and UN-recognised head of state Abdel Fattah al-Burhan—a close dependent on Egyptian military support and patronage, as well as crucially another 'downstream' country—to present a united front against the Ethiopians. Once again, the Egyptians and Sudanese army were in lock-step, publicly rejecting the unilateral decision-making by Addis. Whether al-Burhan can speak for Sudan is highly dubious, but a range of Egyptian officials continues to be at pains to warn of the perceived contraventions of international law by Ethiopia and lay out just how crucial the Nile is considered for Egypt's national security. 

For Egypt, GERD and interference with the Blue Nile have always been a red line. Cairo considers the Nile integral to the ancient civilisation, and much of the country lives just within a few miles of the arterial waterway and depends on it for freshwater. In spite of negotiations and Cairo’s protests, between 2020 and 2024, Ethiopia gradually filled the dam with 60bn cubic metres of water through a 5-stage filling process, as well as activated several turbines. Ethiopia has argued that it has not constricted the downstream flow, but what is less clear is what might happen in periods of intense drought, increasingly common and accentuated by the climate crisis. Any major changes to the flow of the Nile could have calamitous consequences for the agriculture of both Sudan and Egypt.

Nor has the completion of GERD gone unnoticed in Washington. During a meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, Trump commented on the completion of GERD in his classic off-the-cuff manner, saying, "I think if I am Egypt, I want to have water in the Nile and we are working on that." Though Cairo-Washington relations have been somewhat strained by the Israeli obliteration of Gaza, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi heaped praise on his American counterpart, stating that "Egypt values the importance President Trump attaches to reaching a fair agreement that safeguards the interests of everyone linked to the Ethiopian dam and his assertion of what the Nile represents to Egypt as a source of life." Ethiopia, on the other hand, has barely reacted, with only a single GERD official responding to the comment. It was towards the end of the first Trump administration that Egypt purportedly considered bombing the GERD, with negotiations subsequently launched by the US and World Bank at the request of Addis. 

Trump's glowing self-professed image as a peace-and-dealmaker has already jutted up against complex realities in Gaza and in Ukraine, having pledged that he would oversee peace in his first days as president. While the years-long dispute between Addis, Khartoum, and Cairo may not have resulted in war yet, with Sudan aflame and Ethiopia beset by internal conflict as well, the potential for miscalculation and broader violence remains high. But the roots of the dispute over the Blue Nile predate the GERD, partly found in the colonial Anglo-Egyptian Treaty from 1929 and the 1959 Nile Waters Agreement between Sudan and Egypt. Addis was shut out of the colonial-era negotiations, which were essentially negotiated by the UK– which conveniently controlled Sudan, Kenya, Uganda, and cemented the majority of the annual water flow for Egypt and Sudan. Cairo continues to return these agreements as the basis of its opposition to GERD, which Addis rejects out of hand and insists that the dam is necessary for the growing country. The US still has the geopolitical and influence clout to compel the Ethiopians and Egyptians to the table, finally bringing an agreement over the line is another matter entirely. Both Ethiopia and Egypt are members of the BRICS multilateral, but this grouping has little ideological cohesion, nor is it a body that has proven itself interested in or capable of mediation.

Launched in April 2011, the GERD project was the grand vision of Meles, the titanic figure of 2000s Ethiopian politics, and a realisation of the country's growing developmental needs-- around 60% of the population remain without electricity. But he died in 2012, years before the vision could become realised. Some have suggested that Abiy's own obsession with restoring the vaguely-termed ‘sea access' has much to do with aping his forebear. Although Ethiopia did not consult with either Sudan or Egypt when the project began, an Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) was agreed upon in 2012, following the deposition of Hosni Mubarak, then the President of Egypt. Gradually, a Declaration of Principles emerged in March 2015, which was expected to be followed by a framework for filling and operation of GERD. However, both the ESIA and Declaration of Principles were later reneged upon by Addis. Throughout the 2010s, Khartoum oscillated between Egypt and Ethiopia, but generally aligned with Cairo's position that regularising the flow of GERD was critical for their own agricultural output, now decimated by the ongoing civil war. 

The latest round of US and World Bank-brokered talks, which had been intermittent since 2020, broke down entirely in April 2023, with Cairo withdrawing from them in nominal support of Somalia's sovereignty following the fallout from the Ethiopia-Somaliland Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). For Cairo, it was the enduring disagreements over GERD that seemingly motivated its participation in the new 'Tripartite Alliance' for Cairo between Eritrea, Egypt, and Somalia in 2024. Now, with relations continuing to plummet between Eritrea and Ethiopia, the possibility of Egypt and/or allied Sudanese actors being dragged into the conflict is high. Cairo has considerable naval assets and weapons at its disposal– in no small part due to its close relationship with the US– and is highly likely to consider deploying military material and possibly even men to Eritrea to deny Ethiopia reaching the Red Sea. In this context, or if relations were to simply deteriorate further, one of the GERD's turbines may even be considered as a legitimate target for a drone strike to render the dam inoperable. But the risks of such damage to the dam are unknown, and could well accidentally inundate swathes of terrain in the Blue Nile State of Sudan. Less visible, but the Sudanese army could also help facilitate weapons for non-state armed groups such as the Fano coalition in the Amhara region as a means to unsettle its neighbour.

The completion of GERD is a monumental achievement after a vast undertaking, but it cannot mask the day-to-day realities of an increasingly divided and impoverished society, nor the armed conflicts simmering in Amhara and Oromia. And with war on the horizon again in Tigray, the GERD feels like the aspirations of a different Ethiopia and of another, more hopeful time in the country. The final lines of Percy Shelley’s famous Romantic poem from 1818, Ozymandias, capture it best, “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:/ Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’/ No thing beside remains. Round the decay/ Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare/ The lone and level sands stretch far away.’

The Ethiopian Cable Team