The geopolitics of the Nile: the conflict between Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt

Climate change is hitting hard around the world. Fires and floods have become a problem in Germany and drought is desertifying southern Spain, an area historically disputed for the agricultural wealth of the Guadalquivir Valley. These are two examples of problems more or less familiar to the average European, but what is happening in Africa?

Control of water resources has always been of vital importance. Every human community has settled and progressed thanks to access to large bodies of water. Both rivers and seas have been key to human development; not only because of access to drinking water, but also because they have been an almost unlimited source of food and irrigation, a temperature buffer and a perfect channel for trade and transport of goods. The development of Ancient Egypt 5,000 years ago would have been very difficult to explain if we remove the Nile River from the equation. Periodic flooding of the river allowed the settlement of silt, a material that made the banks of the Nile super-fertile. This strategic resource made Egypt the Roman province that supplied grain to the entire Empire.

Illustration of the Nile River flooding process.

This system worked very well until the middle of the 20th century when President Nasser built the Aswan Dam with financial assistance from the Soviet Union. This large hydroelectric dam made it possible to generate great benefits in terms of water storage, hydroelectric power production, and river flow control, thus providing Egypt with the potential for further industrial development.

On the other hand, it caused major problems such as increased salinity of the water entering the Mediterranean due to the reduced flow of the river, increased stagnant water and the resulting increase in diseases (such as malaria), endangered the survival of the famous crocodiles and even had to move part of the historical legacy at risk of flooding as the temple of Abu Simbel. These consequences of the construction of the Aswan Dam have also marked the agricultural calendar forever. The traditional process of silt sedimentation was slowed down and Egypt lost this strategic advantage.

The consequences were unequal, since on the one hand it was possible to electrify a large part of the African country, but on the other hand a large part of the economic activity that fed the region for millennia was lost. Today the country is facing a similar challenge to the one it faced in the 70's but this time they are going to face only negative consequences and no positive ones.

The issue of most concern to President Al Sisi of Egypt is the effects of the commissioning of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. This dam is located at the source of one of the most important tributaries of the main Nile River which is the Blue Nile. This dam is a mega-project promoted by the Ethiopian government under the leadership of Meles Zenawi at the end of the first decade of the century and has the capacity to produce three times the electricity produced by the Aswan Dam. This project promises to give a major boost to the economy of one of Africa's fastest growing lions.

Map showing the geographical location of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile and the Aswan Dam in Egypt. Source: BBC.

The start of the construction of the High Dam was made possible by the regional problems in the MENA region resulting from the Arab Spring. The end of the Mubarak era, the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood to power, then the bloody coup d'état of General Abdel Fatah Al Sisi and his internal war against the Islamist and democratic opposition, were some of the elements that occupied the attention of Egyptian political decision-makers enough to keep an eye on what their southern neighbor was doing. On a par was Sudan, a country that was suffering the consequences of South Sudan's independence (2011), the Darfur conflict (2003-2020) and the internal crisis provoked by a succession of coups in 2021 and the ongoing civil war. The cost of not doing (or being able to do) the homework on time is proving too high for Egypt and Sudan.

The Grand Dam is going to give Ethiopia enormous power over its regional competitors as it will allow it to control water flows into both Sudan and Egypt. Already the normal operation of the dam will cause a considerable reduction in the flow of the Nile, in the event of a conflict, the reduction may be even greater.

Control of water sources as mentioned at the beginning has always been vital to the settlement and well-being of any human community. The struggle for that control becomes more visceral as the resource becomes scarcer due to global warming and increasing world population. The blow to the table that Ethiopia has delivered is especially relevant as it brings back the discussion on development vs. conservation of natural resources.