In the past ten years, Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia have held ongoing talks on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) that is being constructed by the Ethiopian side, over the Blue Nile. But despite the decade-long efforts, there has been a consistent failure to find a resolution; the parties have not reached any agreement regarding the filling and operation of the dam.
The subject has become successively more tense, with Ethiopia announcing its intention to start the second phase of filling the dam reservoir this July. It is a move that both Cairo and Khartoum consider this to be a ‘unilateral step from Addis Ababa’, and a severe threat to their own water security.
Egypt had described the latest round of talks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) capital, Kinshasa, as the last chance to reach an agreement on the Ethiopian Dam, after long years of negation amid divisions among the three countries on disputed points.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi has stressed that River Nile waters were a “red line”, and that harming them would have an impact on the stability of the entire region. Faced with this data, a question arises as to the options available to Egypt and Sudan to deal with the repercussions of the GERD crisis.
