Africa's Largest Dam: Geopolitics of the Nile

The dam is at the center of Ethiopia’s bid to become Africa’s biggest power exporter. Economic growth in Ethiopia, which is Africa’s second-most populous nation, has been stifled by a lack of electricity. Industry revenues are decimated by the nightmare of daily, unpredictable power cuts. The dam’s power will also help with similar problems in Sudan, Kenya and Djibouti, all of which are connected to Ethiopia’s grid and will begin importing power from it in the coming years. Long but futile negotiations over the years have left Egypt and Ethiopia and their neighbor Sudan short of an agreement to regulate how Ethiopia will operate the dam and fill its reservoir.

Egypt, which is Africa’s third-most populous nation, relies on the Nile for more than 90% of its fresh water supplies and wants a legally binding treaty on how Ethiopia can use the Blue Nile’s waters. With the construction of the Dam (GERD) underway, a complex trans boundary water situation is at hand: the GERD is nearing completion, with no specific agreement yet on water sharing or reservoir operations. The dam can capture more than the average annual flow and can thus dramatically change the river’s flow. Although most Nile waters originate in Ethiopia, nearly all use occurs downstream in Egypt and Sudan. Egypt, fearing major disruptions to its access to the Nile’s waters, originally intended to prevent even the start of the GERD’s construction. In fact, Egypt has called the filling of the dam an existential threat. At this point, though, the GERD is nearly completed, and so Egypt has shifted its position to trying to secure a political agreement over the timetable for filling the GERD’s reservoir and how the dam will be managed, particularly during droughts. Thus the Geopolitics of the Nile has been a hot topic.

Sudan is caught between the competing interests of Egypt and Ethiopia. Although Khartoum initially opposed the construction of the GERD, it has since warmed up to it, citing its potential to improve prospects for domestic development. Nevertheless, Khartoum continues to fear that the operation of the GERD could threaten the safety of Sudan’s own dams and make it much more difficult for the government to manage its own development projects.

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