Egypt warns of “catastrophic” effects of Ethiopia’s Nile dam

Egypt on Tuesday warned of “catastrophic” effects of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) which might lead to an escalation of tensions in Africa that threatens international peace and security.

In a speech to a virtual conference of the International Labor Conference (ILO), Egyptian Manpower Minister Mohamed Saafan said that Ethiopia’s unilateral measures regarding filling the dam without a prior agreement with Egypt and Sudan would significantly harm the agriculture sector in the two downstream countries.

Ethiopia plans to go ahead with the second filling of the GERD in July, as it unilaterally did last year. Egypt and Sudan are concerned about the move which they said would affect their shares of the Nile River water, while calling for reaching a prior tripartite agreement on the rules of filling and operating the controversial dam.

Saafan told the ILO conference that the anticipated Ethiopia measure would have “catastrophic social and economic effects on Egypt and Sudan in terms of desolation of agricultural lands and loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs in the agricultural sector, as well as endangering their water security.”

Ethiopia started building the GERD in 2011, and the decade-long tripartite negotiations, including those hosted earlier by the United States and recently by the African Union (AU), have failed to reach an agreement on regulating the filling and operation of the dam,

Egypt and Sudan currently seek to form an international quartet, which includes the AU, the U.S., the European Union and the United Nations, to mediate in the tripartite GERD talks, but the proposal has been declined by Ethiopia

Xinhua