A taste of Nile water politics

Nile basin ministers’ tour of mega Ethiopian dam leaves sour taste for Egypt

Benishangul-Gumuz, Ethiopia | RONALD MUSOKE  | At 8:10 am on an already warming Sunday Feb.23 morning, three light aircraft taxied off the tarmac of Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

They were carrying a group of about 24 people, comprising ministers of water and senior officials of Burundi, Kenya, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda, the Nile Basin Initiative and Nile Basin Discourse as well as journalists.

The Ethiopian government had chartered the planes to take us on a tour of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) hydropower project which has been under construction for over 13 years and is nearing completion.

The project is in Ethiopia’s northwestern region of Benishangul-Gumuz, less than 20km to the Sudanese border. One of the aircraft, a 12-seater Cessna, which carried nine of us took off first but surprisingly landed last. Upon touch down at a small airfield near the mega dam project site after nearly two hours of flight, with short pleasantries out of the way, the ministers jumped into waiting SUVs while we boarded the press van and drove at speed on a fairly smooth murram road.

Our first stop was at a gigantic elevated reservoir of calm water called a roller-compacted saddle dam which, at 50 metres, is as high as a four-storied building. It was a brief stop and we quickly got back into our vehicles and drove a considerable distance to the GERD site proper.

We parked on the bridge and behind us was an enormous calm lake that has been created after the damming of this part of the Blue Nile. It stretches as far as the human eye can see. Right in front of us was a tepid blue water stream flowing out of the huge concrete embankment.

‘Seeing is believing’

In a briefing, Habtamu Itefa, Ethiopia’s Minister of Water and Energy, sounded as if our presence was a form of triumph. I had just asked him about the purpose of our excursion to the GERD.

Pointing me down the dizzying distance, he showed me the various sections of the mega hydropower station, which has set back the Ethiopian government and its citizens close to US$4.2billion.

One of the fears of the downstream countries is that the GERD’s construction will affect the water security of both Sudan and Egypt yet both countries, especially Egypt, almost entirely rely on the Nile water resources for survival.

“There has been a wrong impression about the GERD,” Itefa said, “When you see it now, is it blocked? Seeing is believing.”

“The quality of the dam we have done here is the best quality in the world; it’s the world’s best compact dam, which is safe against any kind of natural or man-made problem that can come. It’s what you can see here,” he told The Independent.

“The dam is only for power generation. That is what you can see on that side, the power station that is sending electricity to the national grid,” Itefa said, adding that the national grid is exporting power to Sudan, Djibouti, Kenya, and more will be going to other neighbouring countries.

We then got off the bridge and drove down the power station to have a tour of the powerhouse. Soon we headed to the contractor’s basecamp for a more detailed presentation of the project.

The presentation by the elderly soft-spoken engineer, Kifle Horo, who is general manager of the GERD touched on the GERD’s intricate engineering design and the widespread benefits of the dam. He dwelt a little more on the perceived fears that have been held by both Sudan and Egypt ever since the project took off, over a decade ago.

The GERD has been at the centre of a regional dispute ever since Ethiopia broke ground on the mega project in 2011. The downstream countries, Egypt and Sudan, see the dam as a threat because of their dependence on the Blue Nile waters. On the other hand, Ethiopia looks at the dam as indispensable to its domestic electrification and economic development agenda.

Egypt and Sudan accuse Ethiopia of constructing the GERD “without consulting or negotiating with them.” Transboundary water experts say international law and relevant treaties such as the UN Convention on the Law of the Non-navigational uses of International Watercourses emphasise the importance of coordinating the use of watercourses between upstream and downstream countries.

But engineer Horo told the visiting delegates that in fact, before the GERD, flooding was frequent in Khartoum (where both the White Nile and Blue Nile meet) but because of the new dam, “they are safe now.”

“This is because we are holding this water and releasing it at the right time,” he said. He said the water is released from November to March.

“We have three spillways, two are ungated, one is at the centre of the dam, near the bridge, along the bridge, and we have also another ungated spillway at the centre of the dam, and we have a gated spillway, which controls the inflow. This gated spillway is automatic, it senses the rate of increase, and then it releases the water.”

“Compared to what they used to get before the dam’s construction, they now get four-fold. “If not for this dam, the release is 120 cubic metres per second but we are now releasing over 1500 cubic metres per second.”

“This dam is not for Ethiopia only; it is a dam for Sudan and Egypt as well because they use irrigation,” added Minister Itefa, “When they get more water, they are able to irrigate more land and do more agriculture.”

Horo said the gated spillway and centre dam are nearly 100% completed while the powerhouses, except for the finishing works, are substantially completed.

“The main dam, as of today, we don’t have any single concrete placing, it’s really completed, and there are finishing works. So the overall completion of the civil work is 99.83%. The other part is electromechanical, so it has generators, and as well as turbines, and balance of plants.”

Horo said, at the moment, the GERD has 30 units, with a capacity of 5,153MW. Out of these, he said, six units are under operation. “We have other units, which are under commissioning, we have two units, one is under wet commissioning, the other one is under dry commissioning, and the rest are under correction. So we have the early generation units, which have been under operation since February 2022,” he said.

“We have a capability to generate 5,150 megawatt at annual energy of 15,700 gigawatt-hour per year,” Horo added.

He then delved into the GERD’s benefits beyond electricity. One of the other benefits is the huge lake formed behind the dam that has allowed a fisheries sector to take root. “The lake formed due to the dam allows fishing, there are abundant fish and they have started harnessing fish.”

Also, since there are islands in the lake, it will allow recreation and tourism. “We have lakeside resort areas and lakeside development is underway. This will create an opportunity for tourism, for recreationt,” he said.

Benefits to Sudan and Egypt

How about benefits to the downstream countries? Horo said he anticipates an energy uplift in Sudan because of the increased discharge of water downstream.

“Right now, if not for the dam, the discharge would be nearly 193 cubic metres per second, because we are in a dry season. The minimum dry season is 138 cubic metres per second, so it’s a dry season in-flow but now we are releasing around 1,500 cubic metres of water every second.”

“The total we are releasing, per day, is around 95 million metre cube of water which is higher than the previous. Extremely high, 10 times. So, we have an energy uplift,” he said and noted that Sudan could harness this opportunity because it has a reservoir capacity.

Horo said, in the past, during the rainy season, water used to fill the dam and the overflow would be released, meaning when the dry season set in, Sudan would generate less power. “But now, continuously throughout the day, the dam is full. So, they are getting enough water (to generate power), there is an energy uplift because of this.”

Horo also believes there has been capital saving, because, due to persistent flooding, there was a possibility of building a high dam. “But now, since they have regulated flow, the dam size can be minimised.”

“For example, if you take Aswan Dam (in Egypt), it’s shallow and the evaporation rate is high. But here, the storage is deep. Studies show that around 4 billion cubic metres of water by impounding it here is saved in the system, in the basin system.”

“The GERD, in my opinion, and as most of Ethiopians are saying, is a win-win development project that overcomes centuries of mistrust among Nile basin countries, and also enhances a new era of cooperation, regional cooperation and development, if there is goodwill from Nile basin countries,” Horo said, adding that, the Nile riparian countries have the opportunity to grow and develop together if there is goodwill.

“This plant is mainly a hydropower plant, which is at the tip of the Sudan border. So, whatever is released, hydropower is not consumptive of water. So, whatever is incoming, it goes out. What we do is to store it for a while, for a season, and then release it. Otherwise, we cannot keep it. Which also increases water security for downstream countries.”

Egypt’s opposition to GERD visit

Yet, despite presentations such as Horo’s, Egypt and Sudan remain opposed to the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.

As part of the recent Nile Day celebrations held on Feb.22 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia had invited representatives from the riparian countries to a GERD site visit. The invitation was met with opposition from the Egyptian delegation.

Beatrice Atim Anywar, Uganda’s Minister of State for Environment told The Independent on the sidelines of the tour that she had expected the Egyptian delegates to accept the invitation to tour the GERD.

She said, during the discussions, Egypt spoke as if by the delegates visiting the dam, “we are coming to legalise it.” “So, they were urging everybody not to come,” she said.

“If Egypt has any concerns that Nile Basin member states need to see, this was the opportunity to do so,” she told The Independent, “For the other member states that have never known their concerns, I expected Egypt to be here to make their case, but also to come and confirm their allegations.”

“We have come, unfortunately, without them, because we would have loved to see them here and tell us that this area is our concern, this is not pleasant, but they were blocking everybody without having courtesy to our host, that people should not come.”

Speaking during the NBI extraordinary ministerial meeting held two days before the excursion, on Feb. 21, the Egyptian officials, led by Prof. Hani Sewilam, the Water Resources and Irrigation Minister, called on the riparian countries’ delegates attending the meeting not to make the trip to Benishangul-Gumuz and accused Ethiopia of using its role as host of the Nile Day to orchestrate the visit in a bid to raise tensions among riparian countries.

That did not sit well with the hosts.

“If Egypt is not willing to visit the GERD, that is their decision,” said Habtamu Itefa, Ethiopia’s Minister of Water and Energy, as quoted by the Ethiopian newspaper, The Reporter. “But Egypt’s call for other riparian countries not to visit GERD is outright disrespect. As Africans, we are not accustomed to such disrespect.”

He said, in the past, ministers of Sudan and Egypt have visited the GERD. “Egypt’s position today is unfounded accusation, baseless and disrespectful,” he said.

On tour, was the Director of International Affairs in the Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Zerihun Abebe Yigzaw. In his own briefing, he told the Nile riparian ministers that Ethiopia has in fact had seven stages of negotiations since the beginning of the GERD project but Egypt has often exhibited a lukewarm response.

In March 2015, Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia signed a declaration of principles that would serve as the basis for negotiations among the three countries over the filling and operation of the GERD.

But, five years later, Ethiopia began the first filling the GERD’s reservoir on the Blue Nile in 2020, and completed the third and final filing in August 2022 without resolving outstanding objections that Egypt and Sudan have raised.

“We established a tripartite national committee, which is composed of two experts from each of the three countries,” he said. He added that Ethiopia even accepted Egypt’s demand to have a subcontractor conduct independent studies on the GERD.

“We wanted to build confidence and to enhance confidence and to build trust. But again, it was Egypt which refused to allow us to collect private data in Egypt.”

“They don’t want us to see how they are using the water. In any case, in this tendency, or the tripartite national committee, we had 17 meetings in Egypt, in Sudan, and here in Ethiopia.”

“There was a team here at the dam site as well. A geological survey was conducted, and it was a very amazing work but they declined to agree with us. And with respect to all that, we signed the declaration of principles on the 23rd of March 2015, which is the only legal document between the three countries.”

Abebe told the ministers that Egypt’s reluctance to accept the GERD has everything to do with “Egypt’s culture of politicising and securitising water.”

On July 8, 2021, Sameh Shoukry, Egypt’s former Foreign Minister, noted in an address to the UN Security Council, “It’s not an overstatement to affirm that, for Egypt, the GERD is an existential threat.”

Preserving the status quo

Abebe said Egypt’s continued frustration of the negotiation process at the tripartite, global and even AU level is only geared toward preserving the status quo. He called that “the elephant in the room.”

Ethiopia believes that Egypt and Sudan have been utilizing the Nile River unfairly for decades, at the expense of both it and other upstream countries. In 1959, Egypt and Sudan signed a treaty that allocated 55.5 billion cubic metres of Nile water to Egypt and 18.5 billion cubic metres to Sudan. Ethiopia, however, was not a party to the treaty, and has attempted to challenge the agreement over the past several decades.

In fact, some experts say that Ethiopia views both the 1959 treaty and 1929 treaty between Egypt and Great Britain that recognised Egypt’s rights to the Nile’s waters and gave it the ability to veto construction projects on the river and its tributaries, as remnants from the colonial era, that are, in Ethiopia’’s view, no longer binding.

“They want to maintain current use as their historic right. But we believe that when they own a historic right, it is unfortunately historical. And we can’t maintain historical.”

“In general, if we look at the current negotiations, Egypt is coming with a policy not to minimise harm, because our filling of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam didn’t cause any harm to Sudan or Egypt. Rather, they want to maximise benefits, and they want to control the dam, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, by forcing Ethiopia to agree into an operation rule that only benefits Egypt,” Abebe said.

Profound mistrust

For Khalil al-Anani, a former Senior Fellow at the Arab Centre, a Washington D.C-based think tank, the main reason behind the tensions between Ethiopia on one hand, and Egypt and Sudan on the other, is “the profound mistrust between the two sides.”

In his 2022 paper, “The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam: Limited Options for a Resolution,” Khalil noted that although the three parties have held several rounds of negotiations over the past nine years in order to resolve their disputes and disagreements over the dam, the negotiations have reportedly led nowhere.

“In fact, the building of the GERD can be seen as an Ethiopian response to what it views as unjust treaties that prevented it from using the Nile waters fairly. In addition, Ethiopia believes that the construction, filling, and operation of the GERD is a sovereign right that cannot be disputed or compromised under any circumstances,” Khalil noted in his paper.

Meanwhile, Egypt and Sudan believe that the GERD will have a significant impact on their economic and development needs, as both countries rely heavily on the Nile River to fulfil them.

But Ethiopian officials insist they have done everything humanly possible to protect the water security interests of Sudan and Egypt. To any untrained eye looking down as one flies over the huge calm sea-like water mass behind the GERD, it is not easy to say if the Ethiopian pledges should be enough to make the Egyptians and Sudanese feel less nervous about the future of their water security, especially in the current times of climate change.