The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) will meet on Thursday to discuss the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) as regional tensions escalate.
Earlier this week, Egypt and Sudan said Ethiopia had begun the second phase of filling the reservoir, an operation not yet confirmed by Addis Ababa. The Nile is 6,695 kilometers and is one of the world’s longest rivers and a major supplier of water and hydropower in a largely dry region. Its more than 3 million square kilometers (1.16 million square kilometers) sewage basin covers 10 countries: Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda.
The two main tributaries – the White Nile and the Blue Nile – converge in Khartoum before flowing north through Egypt and into the Mediterranean. Approximately 84 billion cubic meters of water are estimated to flow along the Nile each year.
Ethiopia in 2011 began construction of GERD on the Blue Nile, about 30 kilometers from the border with Sudan. The $ 4.2 billion dam will produce more than 5,000 megawatts (MW) of electricity, making it Africa’s largest hydropower dam and doubling Ethiopia’s electricity production. Ethiopia began the first phase of filling the 145-meter dam reservoir in mid-2020.
Egypt, a dry nation of nearly 100 million people, depends on the Nile for most of its water needs, including agriculture. Cairo claims a historic right to the river from a 1929 treaty between Egypt and Sudan represented by the colonial power Britain, which gave Egypt a veto over construction projects along the river.
A 1959 treaty increased Egypt’s allocation to about 66% of the river’s flow, by 22% for Sudan. Ethiopia was not a party to these treaties and does not consider them valid. In 2010, with the exception of Egypt and Sudan, the Nile basin countries signed another agreement, the Cooperative Framework Agreement, which allows projects on the river without Cairo’s agreement.
Ethiopia, one of Africa’s fastest growing economies in recent years, insists that the dam will not affect the continued flow of water. But Egypt fears that its supplies will be reduced during the time it takes to fill the container with a capacity of 74 billion cubic meters.
Egypt regards the dam as a threat to its existence and Sudan has warned that millions of lives will be “at great risk” if Ethiopia unilaterally fills the dam. A decade of negotiations has failed to result in a deal. The Security Council meeting on Thursday was requested by Tunisia on behalf of Egypt and Sudan.
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