Politics

No Egyptian cheers for Ethiopia’s Blue Nile dam completion

As Addis Ababa stands to benefit from electricity and revenues, it reassures downstream nations that the $4bn river barrier is an opportunity, not a threat. That's not the view from Cairo.

AFP

A member of the Republican March Band poses for photo before at the ceremony for the inaugural energy production at the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) in Guba, Ethiopia, on February 20, 2022.

No Egyptian cheers for Ethiopia’s Blue Nile dam completion

Amr Emam

last update on 09 Jul 2025

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s flamboyant announcement that the construction of his country’s Blue Nile dam has impressed nobody in Egypt. Likewise, his invitation for Egyptians to attend the official opening event has been seen as bad taste at best, baiting at worst.

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) has been under construction since 2011 and has been producing electricity since 2022. Before the dam’s hydroelectric power came on tap, around 60% of Ethiopians had no electricity supply. Abiy says it will pull millions out of poverty.

Constructed on the Blue Nile, which is the main tributary of the Nile River, the $4bn GERD is 1,800 metres long and 145m high, with a reservoir the size of Greater London that can hold around 74 billion cubic metres of water. It could give Ethiopia up to 6,000 megawatts, roughly double its current output, making the country a net electricity exporter.

None of this reassures 105 million anxious Egyptians, who rely on the Nile for nearly all their freshwater. Yet even before the dam, it was not enough. With an annual share of 55.5 billion cubic metres from the Nile and annual needs of over 105 billion cubic metres, Egypt was already water-poor.

No threat, honest

Abiy, who has buy-in from upstream nations like Uganda, tried to reassure both Egypt and Sudan, which shares Cairo’s concerns. Announcing the dam’s completion, he said: “To our neighbours downstream, Egypt and Sudan, our message is clear: the Renaissance Dam is not a threat, but a shared opportunity.”

Yet to Egypt—which US President Donald Trump said in 2020 had threatened to bomb it—a threat is exactly what the dam is. Although the water may flow downstream in the good times, Egyptians worry that in the event of a drought, Ethiopia will turn the taps off. Even a 2% loss of water could cost Egypt 200,000 acres of irrigated agricultural land.

To our neighbours downstream, Egypt and Sudan, our message is clear: the Renaissance Dam is not a threat, but a shared opportunity

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed

As Egypt's population grows, so does its demand for freshwater, 90% of which comes from the Nile, yet its Nile River share remains the same. This was why the Egyptians prioritised negotiations with the Ethiopians over GERD as a top national issue, but after 12 years these negotiations produced nothing. Cairo now thinks Addis Ababa just used them to buy time, until the dam is an irreversible 'fact on the ground.' Now, it is.

From Egypt's perspective, Ethiopian negotiators spent 12 years evading all opportunities to sign a legally binding deal, first on the dam's construction, then on its filling and operation. Others tried, too, including the African Union, the United Nations Security Council, and the Americans, but it now appears that the Ethiopians simply wanted to dam the Nile with now contractual commitments to Sudan and Egypt, which rely on it.

National priority

Reduced water flow makes Egypt less able to feed its people and more dependent on food imports, explaining why Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi described it as a "threat" to the very existence of one of the world's oldest civilisations and Africa's third most populous nation.

There is no doubt that Ethiopia will benefit from the dam's electricity production and its revenues from exporting electricity to neighbouring countries, thus reducing poverty in a country where almost 69% of the population is designated as poor and another 18% are vulnerable to poverty.

Yet this explanation only goes so far. Ethiopia has an ambition to become a continental superpower, capitalising on the only weapon it has at its disposal: water. Addis Ababa's believes that the water of the Blue Nile is just as valuable as oil, gas and precious metals. It sees the Nile not as a cross-national river, but as a national asset.

Egypt now worries that Ethiopia will feel emboldened by its success in constructing the GERD without international censure and construct even more dams on the Blue Nile, turning the river into an internal Ethiopian lake. It may even encourage other states to do the same. This could be a recipe for future 'water wars', not only in the Nile Basin but in the rest of Africa.

Backup plans

The threat is in the background. Just days before the Ethiopian prime minister announced the full construction of the GERD, Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty said his country reserved the right to defend itself if it was threatened by the dam. What Egypt will do next is anyone's guess. Its intelligence and military are thought to have drawn up various scenarios in the event that Ethiopia starts to ration the river's downflow.

Ethiopia has an ambition to become a continental superpower, capitalising on the only weapon it has at its disposal: water

The big test will come with the first extended drought. Trump seems to be aware of the problem and sought to resolve the issue at the end of his first term, to no avail. He has criticised those who funded the dam, and previous US administrations for allowing it to go ahead, but his comments only highlight Egypt's predicament: either blow the dam up and face sanctions or kneel on bended knee in the hope that Ethiopia keeps the water coming.

Today, Trump appears far less willing to fight Egypt's corner. His relationship with Sisi has deteriorated immeasurably, with the latter declining an invitation to the White House earlier this year, and Trump shunning Egypt on his tour of the Middle East in May. As if to demonstrate the point, Sisi jetted to Moscow to stand alongside Russia's Vladimir Putin and China's Xi Jinping instead.

Trump had wanted to turn Gaza into a "Middle East Riviera" and wanted Sisi to agree to take the Palestinian enclave's two million people while he did so. Sisi refused, saying this was "a red line" for Egypt, before presenting an alternative plan for reconstructing Gaza without displacing its people. Some even think Trump may use the Blue Nile dam as a bargaining chip.

Regardless, the sudden cooling of relations leaves Egypt with few options. It has sought to encircle Ethiopia by signing a raft of military cooperation and common defence deals with its neighbours, sending thousands of troops to Somalia, in part to send a message to Ethiopia: that Egypt is within reach, if it needs to be. Whether this deters Ethiopia from using the Nile's waters as a weapon remains to be seen.

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