Egypt’s Nile Threats Weaken Case to Secure Water: Shinn

Egypt’s Nile Threats Weaken Case to Secure Water: Shinn

By William Davison & Salma El Wardany, Bloomberg

David Shinn

Egypt must
drop its objection to an Ethiopian dam on the main tributary of the Nile River
or it may struggle to ensure adequate supplies from the world’s longest
waterway, former U.S. Ambassador to Ethiopia David Shinn said.

A $4.3
billion, 6,000-megawatt hydropower plant, set to be Africa’s largest on completion
in 2017, has raised concern in Egypt that it will cut supplies of water
allocated by accords put in place more than five decades ago. President Mohamed
Mursi told supporters in Cairo on June 10 his
government will “defend each drop of Nile water with our blood” if the
country’s water security is threatened.

The Grand
Ethiopian Renaissance Dam project, funded solely by Ethiopia’s government, is a
“game-changer” because Egypt has historically blocked international financing
for large upstream Nile projects, Shinn said on June 12. The best way for Egypt to secure its water needs
is by cooperating on the project that could be “transformational” in terms of
industrializing East African economies, he said.

“Ethiopia
is the only country in the region that has the water to make a huge
contribution to increased availability of electricity,” Shinn said in an
e-mailed response to questions. “It could solve all of Ethiopia’s power needs,
sell power at a profit to neighbors, help control periodic flooding in Sudan
and contribute significantly to regional economic integration.”

River
Diverted

Ethiopia
announced the project on the Blue
Nile River, the largest of the Nile’s two
tributaries, a month after former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was deposed
in February 2011. Last month, Ethiopia diverted the flow of the Blue Nile as
part of the construction process.

Ethiopia
is the source of 86 percent of the water that flows into the Nile, a river that
runs 4,160 miles through 11 countries from Burundi in the south to Egypt, where
it empties into the Mediterranean
Sea.

A study on
the dam released last month found the project wouldn’t cause “appreciable” harm
downstream nations, according to Ethiopia’s government, which says it won’t use
the dam for irrigation. The joint report was inadequate because it failed to
“clarify in detail the impacts of the dam,” the Egyptian presidency said in a
statement on June 3.

The
dispute over the dam resonates in Egypt, where the Nile has long been viewed as
much of a symbol of the country as its primary water source. Mursi, in a speech before an Islamist audience on June 10,
said that if Egypt is the “‘gift of the Nile,’ then the Nile is God’s gift to
Egypt.”

Sugar,
Wheat

Egypt
relies on irrigation from the Nile to grow almost all of its cereals, fruits
and vegetables. The country is Africa’s biggest wheat grower and the
continent’s second-largest sugar producer after South Africa, according to
the Food
and Agriculture Organization.

In
meetings between Mursi and Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, the
Egyptian leader was “only interested in constructive engagement,” according to Hailemariam’s spokesman, Getachew
Reda. That contrasts with antagonism in the past, he
said in a phone interview.

“Egypt
will lose the upper hand if they decide to opt out from cooperating as the
upstream countries will go ahead with their industrial revolutions with or
without Egypt,” said Ana Cascao at the Stockholm
International Water Institute. “The best way for Egypt to secure the water it
needs in the long term is by entering into a new era of cooperation.”

Power
Lines

Mursi and Hailemariam
met at an African Union summit last month in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, where Mursi suggested Egypt may fund a transmission line from the
dam, Getachew said. Ethiopia plans to sell 2,000
megawatts of power to Egypt by 2020.

“With the
coming to power of President Mursi there is a
changing dynamic,” he said on June 9. “They would rather benefit from the dam.”

Egypt’s
foreign minister arrives in Ethiopia today to engage in more “constructive
dialog,” Egyptian Ambassador to Ethiopia Mohamed Edrees
said in a phone interview on June 12. “We are working to find a mutually agreed
way forward.”

Mursi’s comments to his supporters may be
aimed at deflecting domestic criticism, said Nadia Ahidjo,
a Nairobi-based analyst at advisory group africapractice.
Opposition groups plan to hold mass rallies on June 30, a year after Mursi was sworn in as Egypt’s first democratically elected
civilian president, in a bid to remove him from office and trigger new
elections.

Domestic
Constraint

The
instability constrains Mursi from rallying support
for his position on the dam, said Ahidjo. “When you
don’t have domestic support it’s very difficult to embark on a regional
agenda,” she said.

The Nile
discharges about 85 billion cubic meters (3 trillion cubic feet) of water
annually, according to Austin, Texas-based, Stratfor
Inc., which is enough to fill almost 2.5 Hoover Dams.

Under a
1959 quota agreement between Egypt and Sudan that excluded other nations
in the Nile Basin, Egypt was given 55.5 billion cubic meters a year and Sudan
18.5 billion cubic meters, the Texas-based consulting firm said in a May 28
note sent by e-mail. The rest evaporates.

Egypt’s
requirement for an additional 21 billion cubic meters by 2050 for its growing
population will mean there is “little water to spare,” Stratfor
said. An equitable distribution of water based on needs and resources may give
Egypt about 50 billion cubic meters, according to Cascao.

Significant
Potential

The dam,
30 kilometers (18 miles) from the Sudanese border, may allow Sudan to boost its
agriculture output by using the regulated outflow of the dam for irrigation, Cascao said. “It increases the irrigation potential
significantly” from three months to 12 months, she said.

Sudan
backs Ethiopia’s dam, which will “bring many benefits and blessings for us,”
Information Minister Ahmed Bilal Osman told reporters in the capital, Khartoum,
on June 9.

While
Ethiopia is open to discussions about technical aspects of the dam with its
neighbors, such as how long it will take to fill the 74 billion cubic-meter
reservoir, it’s unwilling to halt or downsize a key project, Water and Energy
Minister Alemayehu Tegenu
said in a June 11 phone interview.

Egypt’s
best option is to sign a cooperation agreement already agreed to by Ethiopia
and six riparian nations, including Uganda and Kenya, said Debay
Tadesse, a regional analyst at the Institute for Security Studies in
Addis Ababa. The accord, known as the Cooperative Framework Agreement, has
previously been rejected by Egypt and Sudan. Once it’s ratified by legislatures
in six out of 10 nations in the Nile Basin, a commission will be created to
oversee projects on the river.

Sudan Agreed

Sudan has
already said it wants to sign the CFA, according to Cascao.

Signing up
to the agreement would ensure Egypt has a means to protect its water rights as
growing upstream nations increasingly look to use the river, Debay said.

“According
to the CFA, if they exceed allocated water then Egypt can take legal action,”
he said. “Without signing the document it will be virtually impossible to do
that. The solution is cooperation.”

To contact
the reporters on this story: Salma El Wardany in
Cairo at [email protected];
William Davison in Addis Ababa at [email protected]

To contact
the editors responsible for this story: Antony Sguazzin
at [email protected];
Andrew J. Barden at