Egypt and Ethiopia Are Heading toward Conflict over Water. It’s Time to Intervene.

Apr 2, 2021 | Ezzedine C. Fishere
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Egypt and Ethiopia are inching, slowly but surely, toward conflict. Negotiations over the construction and operation of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Nile — which Egypt fears will cause droughts in the country downstream — have collapsed. On Tuesday, the Egyptian president warned that “no one can take a single drop of water from Egypt, and whoever wants to try it, let him try.” The following day, the Egyptian military revealed joint air force training with Sudan, which it is calling the “Nile Eagles.” (Sudan also depends heavily on Nile water from Ethiopia). Meanwhile, the Ethiopian government is moving forward with plans to fill the reservoir of the dam, which it wants to complete by 2023.

It is clear that six years of sterile negotiations and unilateral measures have destroyed the goodwill that the leaders of the two countries displayed when they signed a declaration of principles on the controversial dam in March 2015.