Egypt has vowed to protect its historical rights to the Nile at any cost. TPLF plan to build a $4.2 billion, 6,000-megawatt dam on Nile River- Good News. Egypt and Ethiopia remain at loggerheads over Addis Ababas plan to build a $4.2 billion, 6,000-megawatt dam on a major tributary of the Nile River that Cairo says will greatly reduce the flow of water that is Egypts lifeline. Tension between the two African states rose sharply in January after Ethiopia rejected Egypts demand it suspend construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile, the main tributary of the 4,130-mile river, the worlds longest. Egypt has vowed to protect its historical rights to the Nile at any cost and says it could lose 20 percent of its water if the giant dam in northwestern Ethiopia, one of several hydroelectric projects planned by Addis Ababa, is completed. It would be a disaster for Egypt, Mohamed Nasr Allam, a former Egyptian water minister, lamented to the Guardian daily of London in 2013. Large areas of the country will simply be taken out of production. Despite Cairos tough declarations, and Addis Ababas insistence on pressing ahead with the massive dam -- which it denies will damage Egypt to any critical extent -- theres little likelihood of the two states going to war, if only because the vast distance that separates them. But the dispute is swelling into a major diplomatic wrangle in Africa that could have consequences on other continents as the planet faces water shortages in the decades ahead. Ethiopias Chinese-backed dam program will, if completed, produce abundant supplies of electricity that could transform the economies of the regional states long mired in poverty. Egypts position has been seriously weakened by the December defection of Sudan, its southern neighbor and longtime ally, in the Nile dispute with Ethiopia and other upstream African states. That has left Egypt isolated in a long-running dispute with those states, which all want a greater share of the Nile water than they are accorded under British colonial era agreements that gave Egypt, and Sudan to a lesser extent, the lions share of the rivers flow.Despite political turmoil in both Egypt and China-backed Ethiopia in recent months -- the July 2013 military coup in Cairo that ousted Egypts first democratically elected president, and the 2012 death of longtime Ethiopian strongman Prime Minister Meles Zenawi -- both sides have dug in their heels over the Nile crisis.
Posted on: Sun, 09 Feb 2014 21:53:23 +0000
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