Hydropolitics along the Nile

  Hi everyone and welcome back to my blog! This entry will explore the proxy relationships between the Middle East and the Nile River Basin. Those two regions have been interacting for a long time now. Due to their proximity and common religious and cultural background, the Middle East and the Nile River Basin relationships can be traced back far in the past ( Cascao et al. 2019 ). However, I am interested in the more recent interactions. Those relationships now have a proxy nature and are impacting the Nile Hydropolitical Security Complex ( Idem ). The involvement of Gulf countries Countries of the Gulf (Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar) have to deal with a water-scarce environment. Growing food is therefore an issue. A useful but invisible and silent process that they have been using is virtual water ( Allan 1997 ). Importing food reduces the amount of water used. With the objective of minimising their food imports, the Gulf countries started heavily invest...

  Hi everyone and welcome back to my blog! This post will mark the beginning of a new focus: ‘proxy politics’ in the Nile basin. In the previous set of entries, I covered how the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam has impacted the geopolitics of the Nile basin. The talks surrounding the project are currently facing a political deadlock. Therefore, the three countries involved (Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia) are looking for other options in order to break this stalemate and gain some negotiating power ( Cascao et al. 2019 ). This is where ‘proxy politics’ comes in.  Proxy politics is a situation where an external country becomes involved in the internal politics of another nation in order to serve their own ambitions ( Cascao et al. 2019 ). This often entails similar interests between the proxy and the patron. However, one can expect asymmetrical relationships between them as the latter is usually involved from a distance while all the risks fall on the former ( Cascao et al. 2...

  Hi everyone and welcome to my last entry on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) in which I will discuss pathways and challenges to cooperation. In 1999, the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) was created. Its aim is to foster cooperation among riparian countries by being a forum for discussion and collaboration ( NBI ). The organisation seeks sustainable win-win scenarios for all countries ( NBI ). However, because of the NBI’s favourable position on the GERD, Egypt froze its membership in 2010 ( Ghanem 2017 ). This decision rendered any NBI projects or discussions about the GERD obsolete ( Tawfik 2016 a). As long as Cairo takes no part in the initiative, cooperation between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia on the matter of the dam must come from another organisation. Picture of NBI staff members ( NBI ) After talks between the three governments in Khartoum in 2015, the Declaration of Principles (DoP) was signed. For the first time, they saw eye to eye on several aspects of the GE...

  Hi and welcome back to my blog! This is the second entry on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) and I will focus on how Egypt and Sudan feel about the project. Satellite view of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam ( Wikipedia ) Egypt is mainly afraid of the decrease of the amount of water available to them in the filing period of the reservoir. Indeed, the country is highly dependent on the Nile water as 90% of its water comes from the river ( Jabeer 2020 ). Any amount of water diverted would harm Egypt, especially during droughts. If the filing occurs in dry years, it will significantly hurt their water supplies and the electricity generated by the High Aswan Dam ( Zhang et al. 2015 ). However, it is in Ethiopia’s sake to fill the reservoir as fast as possible, because ‘any delay in the export of power and the realisation of expected revenues would be extremely costly’ ( MIT, 2014, p. 8 ). Egypt is thus strongly opposed to this project and demands that the filing period...

Hi everyone and welcome back to my blog! This entry is going to be about a very complex and conflictual topic: the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). It will be the first of the three posts I will write about the GERD. It will focus on what exactly is the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, and what it could bring to Ethiopia. Map of the Nile with its dams ( Il Nodo di Gordio 2020 ) The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is located in the North of Ethiopia, close to the border with Sudan, on the Blue Nile. This section of the Nile meets with the White Nile in Khartoum and supplies roughly 80% of the Nile water ( Wikipedia ). Ethiopia unilaterally started the construction of the dam in 2011. The project is older but the required capacities (political, diplomatic, institutional, technical, and economic) were lacking ( Arsano 2007 ). It is the largest dam ever constructed on the Blue Nile. It’s hydroelectric power generates around 16,000 GW/year, which is enough to provide electricity ...

Hi everyone and welcome back to my blog on the hydropolitics along the Nile. In this entry, I will discuss Wendy Barnaby’s essay: ‘Do nations go to war over water?’ ( Barnaby 2009 ). I chose to start my blog entries with this because I believe that it cleverly addresses some of the popular misconceptions around the politics of water. In my introduction to the blog, I explored some of the discourses surrounding Africa ( Wainaina 2019 ). I therefore find it suiting that I follow up with discourses about water, and more specifically ‘water wars’. 'Countries do not go to war overwater, they solve their water shortages through trade and international agreements.' ( Barnaby 2009, 282 ) Between 1948 and 1999, Barnaby counted 1,831 events whereby water was at the centre of the interaction ( Barnaby 2009 ). Howevere, none of them ended in a war. Indeed, 67% were solved peacefully through cooperation, and 28% of them were conflictive but with no declaration of war involved ( Barnaby ...