On July 8, 2021 a disagreement
that has been simmering for more than a decade between three African nations
reached the floor of the UN Security Council.
The altercation concerns the vast dam being built by Ethiopia to create
the largest hydroelectric generating plant in Africa.
The long-running dispute
is between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia. It
all revolves around the waters of the Nile.
Egypt’s social and economic
dependence on the Nile has been well attested from ancient times. It remains true today. Fly over the country and, amid vast deserts,
the river and its cultivated banks appear as a narrow green ribbon snaking its
way to the north, where it widens into a delta before reaching the Mediterranean.
The vast majority of Egypt’s 94 million people live adjacent to this fertile
belt, along which its main cities from Aswan to Cairo to Alexandria cluster.
The Nile that enters Egypt is fed from two sources down in the south which meet at Khartoum, Sudan’s capital. The White Nile, which rises in the Great Lakes region of central Africa and flows through Tanzania, Lake Victoria, Uganda and the two Sudans, supplies Egypt with 15 percent of its water. The Blue Nile, whose basin is in Ethiopia, provides 85 percent.
It was in April 2011
that Ethiopia’s prime minister, Meles Zenawi, laid the foundation stone of the Grand
Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (or GERD as it is generally known). With a planned capacity of
6.45 gigawatts (that is, the maximum power output it can achieve at any
point in time), the dam will be the seventh largest hydroelectric power
plant in the world. Intended to relieve
Ethiopia’s acute energy shortage, it will also allow for the export of
electricity to neighboring countries, and some experts suggest the future involves
integrating hydro, solar and wind power with the GERD operation in an East
Africa-wide Green power strategy. Almost
incredibly, GERD’s reservoir is estimated to take up to 8 years to fill with
water. In fact, with the dam now nearing completion, the reservoir
began filling in 2020, and it is continuing to do so this year.
Just before the Security
Council considered the issue, Egypt and Sudan issued a statement accusing
Ethiopia of acting unilaterally, and suggesting the dam was being filled
deliberately. But experts point out that
filling up the GERD reservoir is not like filling up a bath. Ethiopia is not
able to turn a tap on and off at will. The
reservoir behind the dam fills naturally during the Blue Nile's rainy season,
which usually lasts from June until September, because more water is entering
the dam site than the volume of water that can physically pass through the two
open outlets in the dam wall.
Ethiopia says it will take up to six more years for the reservoir to fill to its maximum flood season capacity. At that point, the lake created will stretch back some 250km (155 miles) upstream. The intention is that subsequently, between each flood season, the reservoir level will be lowered and the flow of the Blue Nile downstream enhanced.
Egypt’s near-total
reliance on the Nile for water means it sees the GERD as potentially a threat
to its very existence. While the GERD
reservoir is in the filling process, Egypt can compensate for any loss of water
by releasing more from its own High Aswan Dam.
Its concern is about guaranteeing its supply once the GERD is fully
operational. Ethiopia is reluctant to be
tied to an amount that it must release, especially in periods of drought. Its priority is making sure there is enough
water to operate what will become Africa’s largest hydroelectric plant.
At the Security Council
on July 8 Egypt and Sudan urged the Council to approve a Tunisian-drafted
resolution. It required Egypt, Sudan and
Ethiopia to negotiate, under African Union auspices, a legally binding
agreement that ensures Ethiopia’s ability to generate hydropower, “while
preventing the inflicting of significant harm on the water security of
downstream states.”
But the Council rejected
the idea of involving itself in the dispute to that extent. It supported mediation by the African Union,
and urged Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia to resume earlier negotiations which had
foundered.
This whole dispute is
bedevilled by the fact that Egypt, together with Sudan and Congo, has been at
odds with ten other African countries over the issue of the Nile since
2010. Back in 1929, in the colonial heyday,
Britain signed a treaty which gave Egypt a virtual monopoly over the Nile
waters, with veto rights over all upstream projects. Under the provisions of
this treaty, Egypt later signed a deal with Sudan which guaranteed the two
countries use of 90 percent of the Nile waters.
But the eight other
nations that shared the basins of the two Niles at that time viewed Egypt’s
historic dominance of the river as increasingly untenable. All Egypt’s upstream neighbors were
undergoing rapid socio-economic development, and these emerging regional powers
began to challenge Egypt’s control of what each regarded as its river.
The affected countries
eventually got together, and after a decade of negotiations finally, in 2010, six
of the Nile Basin countries signed the Cooperative Framework Agreement (CFA) – Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and
Burundi, to be joined in June 2012 by the newly-created South Sudan. The CFA was meant to replace the 1929
colonial agreement that gave Egypt absolute rights over all the waters of the
Nile, and provide a mechanism for cooperation among all ten member countries in
managing the Nile basin water resources. However Egypt and Sudan rejected its reallocation
of Nile water quotas, and Congo also refused to sign. The impasse persists.
Whatever sort of
arrangement is finally agreed about the GERD dispute, therefore, a large number
of African nations through which the White or Blue Nile flows remain
dissatisfied with the monopoly on their waters exercised by Egypt and
Sudan. This dispute, too, awaits resolution.
Israel has so far
avoided becoming involved in either altercation. But Egypt has acted as honest broker in the
Israel-Hamas conflict. Perhaps there is
a case for Israel offering to fulfil a similar role over the Nile.
https://www.eurasiareview.com/16072021-the-nile-a-source-of-constant-conflict-can-israel-help-oped/
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