Ten years ago, on 23 March 2015, the presidents of Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia signed the Declaration of Principles (DoP) to resolve their long-standing dispute over the filling and operation of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).
Since then, nothing much has changed. On and off negotiations to reach a legally binding agreement on the filling and operation of GERD failed. Now the dam is a fact on the ground. Its reservoir has been filled over the last five years, and there are still no guidelines to regulate future fillings or the operation of the dam.
While Egypt and Sudan have consistently voiced concerns about the potential impact of GERD on their share of Nile water, Ethiopia views the dam as essential to its development goals.
Ramadan Qurani, an expert on African affairs, said the problems now facing Cairo include “the lack of any Ethiopian will to restart negotiations, and the absence of a strong regional power that can lead talks.” Hopes that the new US administration might serve as mediator appear misplaced, says Qurani, given the GERD file does not feature high on its agenda. Nor is there any obvious model for negotiations that could guarantee coordination, let alone agreement, between Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia.
The water level in the dam’s reservoir reached its highest level in August 2024, with a total of 60 billion cubic metres (bcm) stored. This constitutes an enormous weight behind the dam, says Abbas Sharaki, professor of geology and water resources at Cairo University.
“The fact that the water level has not changed since then means that the four turbines that were supposed to drain 3 bcm per month are not operating,” he explains. If the situation does not change Ethiopia will have to gradually reopen the upper flood gates to discharge at least 20 bcm before the flooding season starts in July.
The lack of coordination and information-sharing is causing confusion in operating downstream dams, particularly in Sudan, adds Sharaki.
Cairo University professor of engineering Tamer Mamdouh notes that while Egypt and Sudan called the declaration reached 10 years ago an agreement on the principles of filling and operating the dam, Ethiopia refused the nomenclature, a clear indication that Addis Ababa wants to avoid any suggestion that the declaration be legally binding. Rather, it wants a set of principles that it can follow when they suit its interests and unilaterally change when they do not.
Qurani ascribes the failure to implement the DoP as a result of the hardline approach to Egypt and Sudan adopted by the current Ethiopian political leadership. Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s refusal to recongnise previously signed water-sharing agreements suggests he wants to use water as a political lever, says Qurani. On the domestic level, he has presented the dam as a national project for the development of his country, but also for the development of other Nile Basin and African states.
Political developments in Sudan since 2019, leading to war in 2023, further complicate the picture, having effectively sidelined Sudan as an active party in GERD negotiations.
The absence of a regional or international power to broker negotiations or guarantee terms has been a crucial factor, according to Qurani. The African Union failed because it has its own structural problems, and showed more than once that it was biased towards Ethiopia at the expense of Egyptian and Sudanese concerns.
Even when the US mediated in 2019 and 2020, the talks ended without agreement, with Ethiopia refusing to attend the final session during which a draft agreement was supposed to be signed, yet more proof, says Qurani, that Addis Ababa lacks the will to negotiate in good faith.
Addis Ababa announced in January that GERD was 97.6 per cent complete, with only minor construction work remaining.
The Ethiopian government has launched a fundraising campaign, urging financial institutions and the public to step up their support for the project, according to a statement issued in January by the Ethiopian Ministry of Water and Energy.
The dam was initially designed to generate 6,500 megawatts of electricity, later reduced to 5,150 megawatts.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 20 March, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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