An African Spring

  

“Egypt sees the dam as an existential threat to its survival, a concern shared, albeit to a s lesser extent, by Sudan. Ethiopia, on the other hand, regards the dam as vital for its energy needs.” (Chothia, 2020)

Egypt and Ethiopia’s current conflict pertains to the aforementioned ‘water war’ presented in Frey (1993) in which Egypt perceives their goals as being blocked by Ethiopia and vice versa. The GERD undoubtedly challenges Egypt’s hegemonic position over the Nile resources and Ethiopia’s decision to build the GERD without consultation with other riparians may be viewed as a subversive yet passive revolt against the anachronistic, inequitable and injudicious allocations of resources by colonial powers. Challenging this power has been described as ‘an African Spring’ (Tawfik, 2016) pertaining to the uprising of the Arab spring in late 2010 challenging oppressive regimes, legislations and practices in the Maghreb. Whether the GERD was an extreme response to the legacies of power imbalance over the Nile is highly debatable, however, it does beg the question of whether Ethiopia can meet its need whilst fulling the promises to “transcend the mistakes of the past [that would]…constrain the present and hinder [unification] aspirations for the future” (Tawfik, 2018) during the Khartoum framework cooperation deal on the GERD.

Why did Ethiopia choose to build the dam? The 1929 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty provisioning the allocation of water rights along the basin was signed by the United Kingdom, former colonial power, which guaranteed an annual supply of 48 billion and 4 billion cubic metres to Egypt and Sudan respectively out of the estimated annual 84 billion cubic metres of Nile water. This was further reallocated in 1959 which increased Egypt’s share to 55.5 billion cubic meters and Sudan’s to 17.5 billion (Harb, 2019) with the additional veto power assigned to Egypt. “Nile Basin Initiative demographic projections for 2050 put Egypt’s and Sudan’s populations well below those in some of the eight other countries in the initiative, making the old water agreements appear less fair every day” (Harb, 2019), these agreements set the premise for localised tensions and future conflicts as the population growth as well as the developmental needs of the riparian states along the river were insufficiently forecasted or looked over. Decades later, Ethiopia set to build the largest hydroelectric dam in Africa, its ties with China have become stronger, business and industrial prospects have soared and an opportunity to lift a significant population out of extreme poverty emerges. The GERD not only has the opportunity to generate income and tackle poverty by providing electricity to 66% of the population, expanding the access to clean water and regulating river flow to maximise production- but completely transform Ethiopia and place it on level playing field with middle-income countries by 2025. The installation of the GERD has a host of indirect and inter-generational impacts on the population of Ethiopia however, the surplus energy provided by the dam with generation further income from the expansion of industrial sector and the exportation of energy to neighbouring countries (Woldetatyos, 2020).  With so many positives for an individual riparian along a basin as wide as the Nile it makes the objections against the stagnation of economic prosperity and poverty reduction particularly difficult by the international community, thus Egypt’s once passive aggressive stance against the project is essence is an impending war.

References

Tawfik, R. (2016). “Reconsidering counter-hegemonic dam projects: the case of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam”. Water Policy, 18(5), pp.1033-1052.

Frey, F., 1993. The Political Context of Conflict and Cooperation Over International River Basins. Water International, 18(1), pp.54-68.

Chothia, F. (2020). Trump And Africa: How Ethiopia Was 'Betrayed' Over Nile Dam. BBC News. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-54531747.

Tawfik, R. (2018). Blogpost: Eastern Nile cooperation at a crossroads: the costs of missing another opportunity. Kujenga Amani.

Harb, I. (2019). River of the Dammed. Blogpost: Foreign Policy. Available at: https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/11/15/river-of-the-dammed/.

Woldetatyos, F., 2020. 10 ways the GERD will reduce poverty in Ethiopia. Blogpost: The Borgen Project, Available at: https://borgenproject.org/ethiopias-gerd/.