For almost a decade, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan have been negotiating over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). Unfortunately, these negotiations have not led to an agreement. Reams of technical reports have been written, dozens of statements have been issued, and hundreds of meetings have been held with heads of state and government, foreign ministers and water ministers, hydrologists and engineers, lawyers and litigators, and foreign mediators and international observers. Yet there is little—apart from a 2015 treaty that provided a legal framework to govern the negotiations—to show for this diplomatic commotion.
The reason these efforts have failed is that there is a fundamental divergence on the purpose of these negotiations. Egypt is pursuing an agreement based on a simple and mutually beneficial quid pro quo: Ethiopia should be able to generate hydropower from the GERD while minimizing the harm on downstream communities in Egypt and Sudan. Ethiopia’s objective, however, is to exploit these negotiations to assert control over the Blue Nile, the largest tributary of the Nile River, and to reconfigure the political topography of the Nile Basin.
