Egypt, Sudan, and nine other countries depend on the Nile, the world’s longest river, for water.
Controversy over the waters soared with Ethiopia’s recent construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) along the Blue Nile, the largest dam to be built in Africa. Ethiopia plans to sell surplus electricity, produced by the dam, to other countries.
Egypt argues that the dam will cut its water supply by 30%, and limit the electricity produced by its own Aswan High Dam (HAD), first built in 1889. Egypt also points to treaties from 1929 and 1959 which grant Egypt about 66% of the Nile’s resource. Ethiopia, in response, called the treaties colonial.
Ethiopia unilaterally planned the GERD, with no downstream approval, which was unprecedented. Egyptian parliamentarians called for the sabotage of the dam by considering it a matter of security. But the Stockholm International Water Institution is optimistic about the dam’s impacts.
The GERD is being built at a 695 sq. mile site in the Benishangul region of northern Ethiopia, near the border with Sudan. Sudan, which was granted roughly 22% of the Nile’s resource by the treaties, and is at a higher risk for adverse effects from the dam compared to Egypt, changed its position on the GERD in 2012. Sudan will import guaranteed electricity from Ethiopia.
The GERD is nearly a third complete. Ethiopia is already paying Italian construction firm Salini Impregilo $1.5 billion (27 billion birr) of the $4.7 billion cost of the dam, and the course of the Blue Nile has already been successfully diverted. There are 8,500 workers working around the clock on the dam. The GERD is a part of a scheme of dams with at least three more to be built.
Although the International Monetary Fund (IMF) opposes the funding for the GERD by Ethiopian government bonds and private donations, and wants international investors to have access to credit and foreign exchange, the Blue Nile (the secondary source of the Nile River) is slated to be in operation by 2017, providing the GERD with a 6,000-megawatt source of energy.
Dahnje Marceo
Writer
dmarceo@ucmerced.edu