Hydropolitics along the Nile

  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. 2019 ). Th

  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 GERD’s

  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 be