All eyes on Egypt: will they bomb the dam? An Ethiopian persepctive of the GERD on the Blue Nile

Update: On July 22, 2020 Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announces the first-year filling target, indicating that enough water had accumulated to enable Ethiopia to test the dam’s first two turbines — an important milestone on the way toward actually producing energy.

Fruitful meeting on the #GERD facilitated by @CyrilRamaphosa in the endeavors to strengthen African Solutions to African Problems. I appreciate my brothers @SudanPMHamdok & @AlsisiOfficial for common understanding reached on continuing technical discussions on filling. pic.twitter.com/tgcnSj8HYq

— Abiy Ahmed Ali 🇪🇹 (@AbiyAhmedAli) July 21, 2020

I’ll start outright by clarifying the purpose of this blog and as such, what you can expect when reading it.

At the heart of this blog is the desire to give voice to not the voiceless per se, but the voice drowned out by another that has been quite loud, particularly online. I am referring to Ethiopia and Egypt in this case – Ethiopia being the earlier and Egypt being the latter. I should add that yes, I do admit, the title of this blog is somewhat dramatic, but there are reasons for this, which we’ll get to later in this blog.

I was prompted to write this blog so when, one morning while drinking coffee and watching the news, I listened as Ethiopian leaders delivered an open and earnest call for those specialising in media to cover what is now becoming a highly contentious topic in the horn of Africa: the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).

In brief, the development of the GERD is one that has created acute tension between Egypt and Ethiopia. Egypt’s concerns, you could say, are understandable as more than 80% of the water reaching Egypt comes from the River Nile. In addition to this, a possible water shortage would mean the end of their current and future plans that include agricultural expansion and other projects.

I would like to reiterate the term ‘fear’ here. Fear, as you can imagine, is a blinding, especially to logic and fact. Even when offering all the plans for review, mediated by Sudan, which show the unlikelihood of a shortage of in Egypt, still fear and doubt remains. Take a look at this interview on Al Jazeera and see the fear working.

It is this same fear that has lead Egyptian media outlets, almost in a campaign like manner, to flood the web with articles that, as you would imagine, do paint Ethiopia in a negative light. Unfortunately, Ethiopia has not been as active with its media response. Today, I ran a quick check using the search terms ‘egypt ethiopia dam’ in Google Search for top stories and found the following results after reaching page 7:

Active news sites based on Google Search results covering developments related to the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) between 4 – 5 June 2o20.

Evidently, Egyptian news outlets outweigh Ethiopian not only in number but in frequency, with the highest frequency coming from the Middle East Monitor.

With little to no media reaction from Ethiopia, the Egyptian positioning starts to hold an omniscient presence, drowning out the Ethiopian perspective. For all it is worth and as little as it would seem, with this blog, I make an attempt to answer the call of my fellow Ethiopians and offer an Ethiopian response in English.

Before I dive in, allow me to share a disclaimer. I am not a journalist and except for the fact that my father, Kesate Birhan Badima, was a long standing diplomat; I do not come from a political science background. I am part of the Ethiopian diaspora, living and working as a Social Media Marketing Expert in Europe. The observations shared in this blog, which I’ve reached after researching both on and offline for the past few days, are solely that of my own and are, I feel, are reflective of that of many Ethiopians. I would also like to share that I am addressing a situation that has been running for over 80 years between Ethiopia and Egypt so it is close to impossible to cover all incidents related to this topic so I have limited the scope for this blog.

Historic background for context

Let’s take a step back to review some facts to help you frame your thoughts.

Since the 1902 Anglo-Ethiopian Treaty to the May 2010 Cooperative Framework Agreement (CFA), the River Nile has drawn highly contested treaties, known as the Nile River Treaties between Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan, with each country pulling in foreign allies to weigh in on power play and claim to having the most say.

The River Nile is composed of two major tributaries: the White Nile and the Blue Nile. The White Nile, which is the longer of the two, begins at Lake Victoria in Tanzania and flows north until it reaches Khartoum, Sudan, where it converges with the Blue Nile. The Blue Nile begins near Lake Tana in Ethiopia.

Interesting to note that the Blue Nile provides 80% of the River Nile’s flow, which is about 84 billion cubic meters of water annually.

The Nile passes through 10 East African countries: Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Sudan and Egypt, which all depend on it for fresh water. Now one would imagine that the River Nile is used equally by all East African countries – but that is not the case.

Historically, the Nile Treaties and subsequent treaties have allowed Egypt and Sudan to position themselves as the main beneficiaries of the River Nile, allowing Egypt rights over 55.5 billion cubic meters of water and Sudan rights over 18.5 billion cubic meters, leaving only 10 billion cubic meters of water for the remaining countries. Given their size and state of development at the time, this disproportionate share of rights made sense – again I stress it made sense at the time, but does it make sense now?

For the past 80 years, Egypt has tried to maintain those rights by any means necessary, including blocking financial and political support from reaching Ethiopia. For the most part, this has worked, until today.

Ethiopia, as one of the fastest growing economies of the world, is seeking to claim a piece of the pie when it comes to the River Nile. This has been met favourably by Ethiopians and unfavourably by Egypt. Is Egypt’s reaction based on a fair stance? Let’s take a look at the two countries. It’s about to get heavy with some stats, but it’s relevant so do bear with me.

A comparison of Ethiopia and Egypt’s use of the Nile

With a total of 114+ million people to date, Ethiopia today is the second most populous country in Africa. According to the IMF and World Bank data, it is also one of the fastest growing economies in the world, averaging around 9.5 GDP growth over the last 10 years and a 7.7% GDP per capita growth. Nonetheless, Ethiopia is still struggling.

When it comes to water consumption, national energy capacity and energy consumption, Egypt surpasses Ethiopia on all counts despite having a lesser population (110+ million to date).

Ethiopia has a per capita water consumption of 125 cubic meter per year, whereas Egypt has a per capita water consumption of 570 cubic meter per year.

When it comes to national energy capacity, Ethiopia only has 4000 megawatts and a per capita energy consumption of about 65kWHh/year. Egypt’s per capita energy consumption is about 1510kWH/year. For content, that of UK’s is 5000kWH/year.

Just looking at this comparison, I do not think it would not be incorrect to state that for years now, Ethiopia has taken the back seat, using relatively meager levels of energy and water consumption despite its growing population and great need for development.

This need becomes pertinent when considering Ethiopia’s import-export imbalance, which creates a permanent shortage of foreign currency to pay off government debt. The construction of a dam on the Blue Nile begins within its own land, will not just guarantee water and electricity for its growing population, it could allow Ethiopia to sell electricity to neighbouring countries, once its own needs are fulfilled, and help build foreign reserves.

It is high time for Ethiopia to lay its claim on the fruits of the Nile.

In 2011, Ethiopia announced plans to construct the GERD: an announcement met with Egypt’s opposition. The ongoing campaign to obstruct Ethiopia’s effort began, which included flooding the web with online articles that favoured Egyptian interests and positioned Ethiopia negatively. One such viewpoint is to describe Ethiopia as being uncooperative. This, in fact, is untrue. Let’s take a closer look at one of the more recent mediation efforts between the two countries.

Egypt’s opposition & Ethiopia’s response

In much similar fashion as its former president, Anwar Sadat, Egypt chose to oppose Ethiopia’s decision to build the GERD by turning to the West, specifically to President Donald Trump. Egypt’s request for foreign assistance led to an invitation to all countries concerned, to hold talks in Washington D.C between January 13 – 15, 2020.

It is perhaps worth noting that Donald Trump chose to bypass the formal route of including the State Department and instead, worked with the U.S. Treasury along with the President of the World Bank, David Malpass, to mediate talks. In very Trump-like fashion, economic leverage, rather than diplomacy, was used to weigh in and pressure Ethiopia to cease development of the dam, which led to the collapse of talks, boycotting continued mediation efforts.

This did not stop the U.S. National Security Council from continuing the pressure with a tweet stating that “257 million people in east Africa are relying on Ethiopia to show strong leadership, which means striking a fair deal”. In response to this, the Associated Press quoted Ethiopian foreign minister, Gedu Andargachew as stating the following: “Statements issued from governments and other institutions on the dam should be crafted carefully not to take sides and impair the fragile talks, especially at this delicate time. They should issue fair statements or just issue no statements at all.”

While I am happy Ethiopia stands its ground to what is rightly theirs, I cannot help but feel weary of the state of affairs between both countries. With ever increasing pressure from Egypt and speculation that matters could turn for the worse, including muted threats to bomb the dam, it becomes increasingly important to find a solution that is mutually beneficial to the two countries soon – my next question is: why is this not possible?

A forgetful Egypt & a pensive Ethiopia

As an Ethiopian, I cannot help but wonder why Egypt continues to choose forceful measures to deal with this matter? Why have they not considered coming forward with solutions that have a high chance of acceptance instead – i.e. solutions that benefit both parties?

This puzzlement becomes more pronounced if we consider the shared history between Arabs and Ethiopians, which is one of mutual respect and high regard. In the 14th Century, Ethiopia, which was then known as Abyssinia, had shown kindness and hospitality to the Prophet Muhammad and his Muslim followers who had migrated to Abyssinia. When a Meccan request was made to hand over the newly migrated Muslims, the King of Aksum declined this and chose to protect them instead.

A humble request to Egypt

Perhaps a little historic reflection might help Egyptian leaders, scholars and the like to reconsider their current approach and come to the negotiation table in a more collaborative, considerate and respectful manner. Would it not be better for Egypt to use the same energy they spend on pushing their current coercive agenda to finding a win-win scenario for both countries instead?

In closing, and to give more voice to the Ethiopian response, I leave you with a statement shared by Ethiopia’s foreign minister, Andargachew, who expressed disappointment in Egypt’s efforts to block the construction of GERD.

“Our African brotherly countries should have supported us, but instead they are tainting our country’s name around the world, and especially in the Arab world…. Our reading is that the Egyptian side wants to dictate and control even future developments on our river. We won’t ask for permission to carry out development projects on our own water resources. This is both legally and morally unacceptable. This dam should have been a reason for cooperation and regional integration, not a cause for controversies and warmongering.”

Quote source: AP article

I know that was a lot and I hope you made it through to this point dear reader! If you have any opinions on the points made in this blog, do share it in the comments below. I look forward to hearing from you.

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Header image source: ‘View of the Blue Nile river as it passes through the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD)’. EDUARDO SOTERAS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES