The Nile river is once again the geopolitical center of focus for Egypt and its friendly neighbour Sudan in a region filled with tension.
Their leaders have shot a cryptic warning to Ethiopia over its controversial ambition of completing a dam on the river to plug its energy deficit and export electricity to the rest of the region.
It was against this backdrop that President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi on Monday received Sudan’s military junta head General Abdel-Fattah Al-Burhan, at Cairo International Airport before heading straight for talks.
The meeting between the two allies had a lot riding on it.
Behind closed doors they synchronized their visions on the current situation in the region, particularly in the Nile River Basin and the Horn of Africa where Ethiopia is a major regional power.
Since 2011, Ethiopia has been building what would be Africa’s largest hydroelectric dam on the Nile which sits at odds with the two countries.
Sisi and Burhan emerged from their meeting speaking identical languages about the future of the Nile, strongly suggesting a convergence of perspectives about the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam known as GERD.
Although they stopped short of naming-calling, their joint statement left little to the imagination on who constituted the main subject of their meeting.
They declared their categorical rejection of what they called unilateral measures apparently by Ethiopia on a river stretching from Lake Victoria in Tanzania coursing through several countries before emptying into the Mediterranean Sea in the north of Egypt.
The Nile is 6, 650km long and flows through 10 countries in northeast Africa. Thanks to British colonial quirkiness when apportioning rights to water from the river, Egypt and Sudan have been the main beneficiaries ever since.
GERD is a statement by Ethiopia to rewrite this colonially-inspired geopolitical script and correct what successive governments in Addis Ababa regard as a ‘historical anomaly’ with far reaching implications for other riparian nations which should be enjoying those same rights of access to its water.
For the past year, Sisi and Burhan have been cozying up to each other and the result has been a Cairo-Khartoum alliance already underpinned by close working relations between their national security forces.
Sisi has been tacitly backing the Burhan-led military junta in Sudan in the conflict with the Rapid Support Forces who were routed in the capital Khartoum last month and driven from other parts of the country in recent weeks.
Cairo and Khartoum see ‘encroachment’ on the Nile as an existential matter and vowed to take joint action which was unspecified to safeguard the water security of both states.
This means backing each other in the face of Ethiopia’s continued intransigence over going ahead with the GERD project which saw its fourth filling in September 2023 with water levels reaching 625 metres, to the consternation of Egypt.
Over the years, there have been faint echoes of open conflict over the Nile, which prompted Ethiopia to build an air defense system and neutralise possible threat of air strikes on the dam. The Pantsir-S1 air defence system from Russia and the SPYDER-MR medium-range air defence system from Israel were installed in what officials in Addis Ababa hope would function as a deterrent.
However, save the occasional belligerent rhetoric from Sisi, Cairo has not lived up to this threat as Ethiopia feared.
Sisi and Burhan say they will remain committed to upholding international law to achieve mutual benefit for all riparian nations which does not necessarily erase this threat but suggests that peaceful diplomacy was the overriding approach to tackling one of the region’s most enduring problems between states.
They reviewed ways to further enhance bilateral cooperation, and Egypt’s effective engagement in the reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts in Sudan, in the aftermath of the war’s destruction.
President Sisi and General Burhan also addressed the ongoing implementation of joint projects across a range of vital sectors, including electrical interconnection; railways; trade; cultural and scientific exchange; as well as cooperation in health, agriculture, industry, mining, and other spheres.
This aims to achieve the envisioned integration between the two countries and leverage the significant potential of both nations and their peoples.
Their talks also focused on the recent field developments in Sudan and the territorial advancements secured by the Sudanese Armed Forces in reasserting control over the capital, Khartoum.
Egyptian and Sudanese leaders also agreed on the imperative of strengthening efforts to deliver the requisite support and assistance to Sudanese nationals residing in conflict-affected areas.
WN/as/APA