Ethiopia and Egypt have always been at cross purpose over the latter’s ambitious mega hydroelectric dam on the River Nile, each courting international public opinion in favour of their respective positions.
The government of Abiy Ahmed which inherited the project from his immediate predecessors Hailemariam Desalegn and the late Meles Zenawi recently announced that work on the dam has been completed ahead of its inauguration next September.
The dam which has a capacity of 5.15 gigawatts, making it the largest hydroelectric energy facility in Africa and listed as within the 20 biggest in the world was built over a 14-year period at a whopping cost of $5 billion.
Its purpose is to plug the energy deficit within Ethiopia and allow the country to export electricity to its neighbours in the region.
Initially referred to as Project X and the Millennium Dam, it was finally renamed the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, in pointed reference to the country’s new vision for a rebirth to recapture its ancient glory as a regional power.
But the potential implication of a dam built on the world’s longest river has been a source of tension between past and present administrations in Addis Ababa and its biggest opposition in Cairo, leading to hard, combative rhetoric, culminating in threats of going to war to settle this score.
Located some 2,500 kilometers away, Egypt which relies on the Nile for some 90% of its water supply had hawks which entertained the idea of sabotaging the dam construction site, prompting an elaborate Russian-made air defense system and a protection shield bought from Israel which rejected a request from Egypt not to go ahead with its sale and delivery.
However, the drumbeat of conflict has since receded when it became increasingly clear that neither country had the stomach for open militaristic confrontation, preferring instead the language of diplomacy which in essence has failed to persuade Ethiopia to halt or suspend the project.
Throughout the dam’s construction, Egypt had made it clear it would be posing an existential threat to the North African country and remonstrated vigorously in a desperate bid for international support. A major power like the United States had demonstrated an ambivalent position in the dispute involving two of its closest allies in the region.
However current US President Donald Trump made a recent statement about his predecessors allegedly funding the construction of the dam.
Trump made the remark on July 14th during talks with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in New Jersey, and appeared to be backing Cairo, when he repeated this claim, referring to the Nile as ”life for Egypt”.
This prompted the authorities in Addis Ababa to respond. The CEO of the Public Coordination Office for the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, Aregawi Berhe, said the GERD which has been under construction since 2010, has been financed by the people and government of Ethiopia.
Berhe dismissed Trump’s statement as ”a baseless hypothesis” which is almost laughable given that the funds for building the dam had come ‘explicitly’ from crowdsourcing through trading in bonds and employee contributions.
The absence of outside financial backing for the project is directly linked to Egypt’s strong international campaign against mobilising active support for the project.
Trump’s shock decision to apparently pick sides in the Ethiopia-Egypt Nile dam dispute points to shifting geopolitical interests pursued by the United States in the region.
Washington has long counted Ethiopia as a serious ally in the Horn of Africa, where its counter-terrorism strategy required consistent support from Addis Ababa to check the advance and influence of militant groups such as al-Shabaab in Somalia. Trump’s return to the White House after a four-year gap has shaken Washington’s position to its foundation and took it on a different trajectory given Ethiopia’s increasingly close relations with China and to some extent Russia. In contrast to Egypt which still remains its strongest ally in the Middle East, Ethiopia has been seemingly slightly ”pulling away from Washington’s friendly embrace and into the waiting arms of US rivals in the east”.
In the past three years, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has made more trips to Beijing and Moscow than to any other Western capital, underlining just how far relations with Beijing and Moscow have improved and how ties with the United States have been left to ”burn and die”. Observers say PM Abiy may just realise that dynamism is the name of the game his country needed to play and realise its grand ambition of becoming an East African and global giant worth her weight in diplomacy.
It is generally understood internationally that although Beijing and Moscow had not openly backed Ethiopia over the GERD dam and alienate Egypt, the two giants of the east have indirectly benefitted the project. China’s Exim Bank had even provided $1 billion to acquire the turbines and electrical equipment for the dam.
This is deeply appreciated by Ethiopia which to some extent had felt itself internationally isolated at fora where issues around the project were a theme.
Despite repeated assurances from Ethiopia, Egypt will maintain a cautious approach over the dam and as its September launch inches closer, Cairo will look to keep the pressure on Addis Ababa for a binding agreement about the future of her water security.
MG/as/APA