Egypt said Sunday it will not permit any country to gain control over the flow of Nile water reaching downstream nations, responding sharply to remarks by an Ethiopian official about plans to build additional dams on the river.
An unnamed Egyptian official, cited by the state news agency MENA, said comments attributed to Ethiopia’s water and energy minister, Habtamu Itefa, regarding new dam construction and control over water flows to Egypt and Sudan amounted to a continuation of what Cairo characterized as Ethiopia’s unilateral approach to managing the shared river, and a clear breach of international law.
The official dismissed what were described as Ethiopian ambitions to dictate terms over an international waterway shared among multiple nations, saying Egypt possesses a range of tools it is prepared to use to protect its interests, without specifying what those measures might involve.
The exchange is the latest flashpoint in a long-running dispute centered on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, a massive hydroelectric project on the Blue Nile that Ethiopia formally inaugurated last September. Egypt, which depends on the Nile for the overwhelming majority of its fresh water supply, has repeatedly voiced alarm that the dam’s operation could reduce the water reaching its population of more than 100 million people, particularly during periods of drought. Ethiopia has defended the project as essential to its energy development and has argued that colonial-era agreements granting Egypt and Sudan the bulk of the Nile’s flow unfairly excluded upstream nations from any share of the river’s resources.
Years of negotiations involving Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan, at various points backed by international mediators including the United States and the World Bank, have failed to produce a binding agreement on the dam’s operation or on water-sharing arrangements more broadly.
