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Ethiopia will be celebrating a development milestone when it formally opens Africa’s largest hydropower dam on the Blue Nile river on Tuesday, but for Sudan and Egypt downstream the launch is no reason to rejoice.
After years of failed negotiations, both downstream countries warned of “grave consequences” in the absence of an agreement on how water flows will be managed once the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, or Gerd, becomes fully operational.
Construction of the dam has fuelled nationalist fervour in Egypt, which relies on the Nile for almost all of its water needs, and also in Ethiopia, where use of the river is seen as a sovereign right and where members of the public contributed to its financing through crowdfunding.
Celebrations for the opening of the 5,150MW capacity dam, which has been under construction for 14 years, will be held across Ethiopia, according to the foreign ministry in Addis Ababa.
The Ethiopian government is also hoping that numerous African heads of state attending a climate summit in Addis Ababa will also attend the inauguration at the dam itself.
“For Ethiopians this is a celebration of a generational aspiration . . . to make use of this natural resource for development,” said foreign ministry spokesperson Nebiat Getachew.
The Blue Nile, which originates in Ethiopia and joins the White Nile in Sudan’s capital Khartoum before flowing into Egypt, provides 85 per cent of the waters of the combined river.
Getachew said that the dam, as well as providing access to electricity for some of the nearly half of the 120mn Ethiopian population who live without it, would bring benefits to downstream countries in the form of flood control and power purchase agreements.
“The main thing is we do not envisage for Egypt or Sudan to have shortages of water supply. For us it is not an Ethiopian dam. It is a regional dam with collective aspirations.”
But Sudan and Egypt repeated in a joint statement last week that the Renaissance Dam “breached international law and would cause grave consequences to the two downstream countries”.
They described it as a “continuing threat” to water security in the east Nile, citing “serious concerns” as a result of Ethiopia’s “unilateral steps” in filling and operating the Gerd.
Egypt, a country of 110mn people, is completely reliant on the Nile for its agricultural and other water needs and now finds that what it has considered its rightful share of water could be threatened by developments upstream.
The Egyptian and Sudanese positions have been underpinned by a bilateral treaty between the two countries signed in 1959 governing use of the Nile’s resources.
Ethiopia describes that treaty, which did not take into account the other riparian states, as “obsolete” and has won support from Burundi, Rwanda, Kenya, South Sudan and Uganda. They have joined Ethiopia in a new Nile River Basin Cooperative Framework Agreement, which came into force in October 2024.
Egypt contends that Ethiopia has consistently stymied efforts to reach a binding agreement to guarantee that agreed quantities would be discharged from the dam during prolonged or severe droughts, when Ethiopia might want to build up levels in the reservoir for hydropower generation.
The dam has gradually increased electricity generation during the period it has been filled, with six of its 13 turbines already functioning. On Tuesday, according to the foreign ministry in Addis Ababa, all of them will be used.
“There have been no adverse impacts downstream during the filling of the Gerd reservoir,” said Ana Cascao, an independent consultant and Nile specialist. “But if severe or prolonged droughts occur in the future, impacts can indeed occur. These can only be minimised by a co-operative agreement acceptable to all parties.”
Some technical co-operation is already taking place between Ethiopia and Sudan, which has an older dam, built in 1966, only 70 miles downstream from the Gerd.
Getachew said that Ethiopia wants a collaborative approach with Sudan and Egypt and remains open to reaching agreement on how water flows are managed, describing the waters of the Nile as a “shared resource”.
