Ethiopia is for the primary time getting ready to generate energy from the enormous hydroelectric Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) that Addis Ababa is constructing on the Blue Nile (one among two foremost tributaries of the Nile) in a transfer prone to improve current tensions with Egypt and Sudan.
Ethiopian press stories stated that Addis Ababa is now prepared to start out testing energy era from the dam.
Ethiopia, which has accomplished the development of greater than 80% of the controversial dam, is searching for to supply 700 MW by working the primary two generators, thus protecting 20% of its personal wants, authorities officers have acknowledged.
In the meantime, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed convened an expanded Cupboard assembly on Jan. 5 on the building web site of the dam within the Benishangul area, positioned 900 kilometers northwest of the capital, Addis Ababa, to observe up on the implementation of his plan for the primary 100 days after his re-election as prime minister in July 2021. Ahmed additionally inspected the construction work of the dam the place work began 11 years in the past.
Ethiopia has repeatedly failed to start out producing energy from the GERD. Addis Ababa officers had hoped that electrical energy can be generated from the dam by October 2021, however that was not achieved both. The electrical energy manufacturing capability in Ethiopia at the moment stands at 4,967 MW.
Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia have been locked in a bitter, decade-old dispute over the GERD amid repeated failed attempts on the a part of the African Union since June 2020 to dealer a deal to finish the stalemate within the negotiations. The final try was in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in April 2021. It didn’t result in an settlement on relaunching the negotiations and prompted the events to trade accusations of obstructing the talks.
On July 19, 2021, Ethiopia introduced the completion of the second filling of the dam’s reservoir, which might be sufficient to generate hydroelectric energy, regardless of Egypt and Sudan’s rejection of the unilateral determination.
This Ethiopian transfer got here months after a diplomatic escalation culminated in repeated Egyptian threats to hold out army motion towards the dam within the occasion Addis Ababa launched into this step.
Regardless of the current decline in indications whereby Egypt would take army motion towards the dam, diplomatic statements exchanged between the 2 international locations nonetheless point out that the battle could erupt at any second, with repercussions prone to have an effect on an already unstable area.
Abbas Sharaki, Egyptian professor of geology and water assets at Cairo College, advised Al-Monitor that Ethiopia’s insistence on working the 2 generators and producing electrical energy with out reaching an settlement with Egypt and Sudan proves Addis Ababa’s ongoing intransigence, and this complicates the negotiations.
He added that though energy era requires the passing of three billion cubic meters of water saved final yr and that can find yourself in Egypt and Sudan, “This stays a step by way of which Ethiopia is attempting to impose a fait accompli.”
Addis Ababa argues that it has efficiently accomplished the second part of filling of the dam with a capability of 13.5 billion cubic meters of water as deliberate, however Egyptian and Sudanese water specialists say that it has solely managed to retailer 3 billion cubic meters along with the 4.9 billion cubic meters of water that was saved through the first filling part in July 2020.
Sharaki stated that the convening of an Ethiopian Cupboard assembly on the dam web site conveys two messages, the primary of which is to the Ethiopians whereby the federal government is decided to finish the mission as quickly as potential, and the opposite to Egypt and Sudan whereby “the Ethiopian authorities is decided to maneuver ahead regardless of the failure to succeed in an settlement with the downstream international locations on filling and working the dam.”
Whereas Ethiopia says the $5 billion dam, the most important in Africa, is of paramount significance for its financial improvement and power era, Egypt considers it a critical risk to its provides of the Nile water, because it nearly fully depends upon them to satisfy its wants of contemporary water.
A current Egyptian government report anticipated that filling and working the dam primarily based on Ethiopian plans with out reaching an settlement will negatively have an effect on the manufacturing of hydroelectric energy generated by the Excessive Dam. Hydroelectric energy accounts for about 6% of the electrical energy manufacturing in Egypt, most of which comes from the Excessive Dam.
Egyptian Minister of Water Assets and Irrigation Mohamed Abdel-Ati additionally warned in November that any scarcity of water coming to Egypt would have an effect on employees within the agricultural sector, thus inflicting safety and social instability within the area whereas rising unlawful immigration.
For its half, Sudan, which believes that the dam regulates the waters of the Blue Nile and generates energy it may benefit from, is searching for ensures concerning its secure and applicable operation with the intention to protect its dams — together with the Roseires Dam, the most important Sudanese dam.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi stated in November that his nation was trying ahead to reaching a authorized, binding and simply settlement on the GERD with Ethiopia “removed from any unilateral method that seeks to impose a fait accompli,” primarily based on the principles of worldwide regulation and the outcomes of the UN Safety Council.
In mid-September, the Security Council issued a presidential assertion calling on the three international locations to renew negotiations in a constructive and cooperative method below the auspices of the African Union “to swiftly finalize the textual content of a binding and mutually acceptable settlement on the filling and operation of the dam.”
Since then, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is at the moment chairing the African Union, has been searching for to immediate the three international locations to renew negotiations, to no avail. The opportunity of resuming negotiations was additional sophisticated by the turmoil in Sudan and Ethiopia’s preoccupation with its civil struggle with the Tigray rebels.
However federal authorities forces have lately made progress of their 14-month-old struggle towards the Tigray Individuals’s Liberation Entrance rebels after they took management of the strategic areas, most notably Amhara and Afar, from which the rebels all of a sudden withdrew in December; this may increasingly encourage a cease-fire and the beginning of negotiations between the 2 events.
The USA is pushing for the resumption of negotiations between the three international locations to succeed in an settlement earlier than the third filling of the dam’s reservoir scheduled for subsequent June. Washington believes that the Tigray struggle has negatively affected the negotiations, nevertheless it hopes that ending the struggle will contribute to reviving the tripartite negotiations.
Quite the opposite, former US Ambassador to Ethiopia David Shinn believes that Ahmed’s settlement of his struggle with Tigrayans will not be in Egypt’s interest.
Shinn advised Al-Monitor that it’s within the curiosity of Egypt for the Ethiopian central authorities to stay in disarray. “Any restoration of management by Abiy Ahmed will strengthen the Ethiopian authorities’s hand and its potential to face as much as Egypt,” Shinn added.
“The persevering with political uncertainty in Sudan additionally strengthens the hand of Abiy Ahmed (within the dam dispute), as Sudan had aligned itself with Egypt on the GERD problem and now’s largely consumed with inside political issues,” he stated.
Whereas Sharaki believes that resuming negotiations on the dam disaster can be tough at the moment given the deteriorating political state of affairs in Sudan, he anticipated that David Satterfield, the newly appointed US particular envoy for the Horn of Africa, succeeding Jeffrey Feltman, will conduct a tour that features the three international locations and that will contribute to breaking the present impasse within the negotiations.
