Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia on Saturday launched a new round of talks mediated by the African Union (AU) on the disputed Blue Ethiopian Renaissance Dam project on the Blue Nile, which nations in subsequent countries fear could lead to further water shortages.
The three-day talks held by President Felix Tshisekedi take place in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the current chairman of the AU.
Egypt’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Cairo wants the negotiations to eventually lead to a legally binding agreement on the operation and filling of the dam’s massive reservoir.
Foreign and irrigation ministers from the three nations are taking part in the talks, along with experts from the AU, according to Ethiopia’s Minister of Irrigation Seleshi Bekele.
Sudan said it would participate in the Kinshasa Round in order to agree on a “negotiation strategy” to ensure that the talks were constructive. This would include an Egyptian-backed Sudanese proposal to include the United States, the European Union and the United Nations as mediators along with the AU, the Sudanese Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Ethiopia has rejected the proposal, saying it “believes in solving African problems for Africans.”
The Nile, the world’s longest river, is a lifeline that supplies both water and electricity to the ten countries it crosses, with the Blue Nile as its main tributary. Upstream Ethiopia says that the hydropower produced by the dam will be crucial to meet the energy needs of its 110 million people. Egypt, which depends on the Nile for about 97 percent of its irrigation and drinking water, sees the dam as an existential threat.
The Blue Nile River is seen as the reservoir of the large Ethiopian Renaissance dam being filled near the border between Ethiopia and Sudan, in this broad spectral image taken on November 6, 2020. (NASA / METI / AIST / Japan Space Systems and USA / Japan ASTER Science Team / Dividend via Reuters)
The dispute is about how quickly a planned reservoir fills behind the dam, the method of its annual filling and how much water Ethiopia will release downstream if a perennial drought occurs. Another difference is how the three countries would resolve any future disputes.
Egypt and Sudan want a legally binding agreement on the filling and operation of the dam, while Ethiopia insists on guidelines.
The talks in Kinshasa come a few days after Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi said his country’s share of Nile water was “untouchable” – a clear warning apparently to Ethiopia, which is preparing for a new stage in the dam’s filling later this year.
El-Sissi warned on Tuesday of “instability that no one can imagine” in the region if the dam is filled and operated without a legally binding agreement.
Bekele, the Ethiopian minister, said his country “is always determined for principled, fair and reasonable exploitation without causing significant harm”, according to the Ethiopian official news agency.
Egypt is a mostly desert country that depends on the Nile for almost all of its water needs. It fears that a rapid filling would drastically reduce the Nile, with potentially serious effects on its agriculture and other sectors.
Ethiopia says the $ 5 billion dam is significant and claims that the vast majority of the population lacks electricity. The dam will generate over 6,400 megawatts of electricity, which is a huge increase in the country’s current production of 4,000 megawatts.
Sudan wants Ethiopia to coordinate and share data on the dam’s activities to avoid flooding and protect its own power-generating dams on the Blue Nile, the main tributary of the Nile River. Blue Nile meets White Nile in central Sudan. From there, the Nile meanders north through Egypt and flows into the Mediterranean.
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