Water, Peace, and Politics: The Ethiopian Renaissance Dam from Polarization to Prosperity

In December 2023, Egypt unilaterally declared the end of a 12-year negotiation process over the distribution of Nile water resources among Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan without reaching a successful agreement. This raises the question of why it failed and what comes next – with significant ramifications for regional human security as millions of lives hang in the balance.

The seeds of the dispute were first sown a decade earlier, when Ethiopia announced its intention to build the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the Blue Nile River in April 2011. The mega hydropower project is expected to produce approximately 6,500 megawatts of electricity for Ethiopia, significantly increasing its renewable power supply. The government considers the GERD to be a cornerstone in Ethiopia’s sustainable development and industrialization agenda; the project would provide electricity to nearly 55% of Ethiopians, with the surplus energy exported to neighboring countries. While the developmental dividend would be enormous for Ethiopia, neighboring Sudan and Egypt see the Dam differently.

Despite the potential benefits of the GERD, the governments of Sudan and Egypt view the GERD with deep alarm. On the one hand, the GERD could theoretically mitigate Sudan’s historic Nile flow challenges, reducing the risk of flooding by regulating withdrawal upstream. The government nevertheless hesitates to support the Ethiopian project as it fears that building and filling the GERD without first enshrining rules for shared dam operation could threaten millions of people in Sudan. This is because filling the dam without coordination or collaboration could make it challenging for Sudan to predict and plan water allocation and management in the absence of joint independent Environmental and Social Impact Assessments (ESIAs), complicating flood risk management. For this reason, Sudan insists on outlining clear rules for dam operation before granting its blessing to the GERD, lest Ethiopia find itself in a position to unilaterally determine Nile flows in the future.

In Egypt, the concern is less about flooding risks and is more directly informed by anxieties related to water access. Though Egypt draws on the Nile for approximately 97% of its freshwater supply, this is hardly enough to meet its ever-growing water demand gap. With a population of over 110 million and an annual demographic growth rate of 1.8%, the North African country needs an estimated 120 billion cubic meters of freshwater each year. Almost four-fifths of this water supply is consumed by Egypt’s all-important agriculture sector, which accounts for over 10% of the national GDP and provides livelihoods for 55 percent of the population, sustaining 62 million people and feeding tens of millions more. Though Egypt’s water scarcity crisis long predates the building of the GERD and is of its own making – stemming from wasteful water consumption practices, unsustainable land reclamation projects, and a bloated agricultural sector that has historically privileged the cultivation of cash crops over crucial cereals – potential GERD-related disruptions in river flows could nevertheless make an already dire problem worse. The Egyptian government, therefore, considers the potentially ruinous consequences of restricted Nile flows as a catastrophic possibility that must be prevented at all costs.

The path forward for all parties lies in negotiating a realistic but equitable agreement on GERD operations: one that grants Egypt and Sudan meaningful assurances of collaborative Nile governance without denying Ethiopia its legitimate developmental needs. A needs-based approach would thus pave the way for common prosperity, ensuring fair resource distribution and reliable Nile access between the upstream and downstream countries.

Time to solve this crisis is quickly running out. Though the dispute continues to inflame tensions between the three countries, the dam project has proceeded apace in recent years. Despite objections from Egypt and Sudan, the GERD is already nearing completion, reaching 94% of its filing capacity in January 2024. As negotiations stall, break down, and restart, the facts on the ground are quickly changing; a reasonable and mutually tolerable settlement is urgently needed if all sides are to reach a sustainable solution in time. To understand the prospects for such an agreement, it is worth considering what deals were previously on the table and why they failed. Decoding a Decade of Tensions.

In June 2020, the Egyptian government sent an official letter to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) urging it to intervene and act on the GERD issue. The African Union also attempted to mediate an agreement between the three countries. Neither multilateral body could resolve the dispute, in part because the parties have differing views on the applicability of prior treaties and different interests in future agreements.

First, as for prior treaties, Egypt cited several reference documents that should be used to solve this disagreement, including the 1902 Anglo-Ethiopian Treaty between Great Britain and Ethiopia. According to Article III of this treaty, Ethiopia committed not to construct on the Blue Nile, Lake Tana, and the Sobat River if the project threatened the water flow into the Nile River. The 1929 Nile Agreement between Egypt and Great Britain (on behalf of Sudan, Kenya, Tanganyika, and Uganda) allocated 48 billion cubic meters. It gave Egypt veto powers over any construction projects on the Nile that could affect its water share.

Ethiopia has deemed both treaties invalid. The first treaty was established during the colonial period, and the second failed to adequately address Ethiopia’s rights and requirements regarding water usage.

A sustainable solution requires a legally binding agreement. Codifying this agreement into a treaty that ensures equal distribution of the Nile resources according to human needs will decrease the likelihood of future conflict.

Secondly, regarding a future agreement, we can outline the major differences between parties’ interests in three substantive issues as outlined below.