KINSHASA, April 5, 2021 (BSS/AFP) – Foreign ministers from Egypt, Ethiopia
and Sudan held talks in Kinshasa on Sunday over Addis Ababa’s contested giant
dam on the Nile, seen as vital by Ethiopia and a threat by downstream Egypt
and Sudan.
“These negotiations represent the last chance that the three countries must
seize to reach an accord,” Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry told
Egyptian media.
He said the accord should allow the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD)
to be filled in time to begin operations in the coming months, before the
next rains.
The dispute over the GERD, built across the Blue Nile, has been simmering
for around a decade.
Democratic Republic of Congo President Felix Tshisekedi, who became
chairman of the African Union in February, urged the foreign ministers as he
opened the talks “to launch a new dynamic”.
“I ask you all to make a fresh start, to open one or several windows of
hope, to seize every opportunity,” he said.
He welcomed the willingness of the participants “to seek African solutions
for African problems together”.
Egypt and Sudan this month called on Kinshasa to steer efforts to relaunch
negotiations on the contested dam.
For Tshisekedi, “The human dimension must be at the heart of these
tripartite negotiations.”
The people of all three countries have a right to water, food and health,
he stressed.
The US ambassador to DR Congo, Mike Hammer, attended the start of the
talks, which were set to wrap up on Monday.
The Nile, the world’s longest river, is a lifeline supplying both water and
electricity to the 10 countries it crosses.
Upstream Ethiopia says hydroelectric power produced by the GERD will be
vital to meet the energy needs of its 110 million people.
Egypt, which depends on the Nile for about 97 percent of its irrigation and
drinking water, sees the dam as an existential threat.
Sudan, also downstream, fears its own dams will be compromised if Ethiopia
proceeds with filling the GERD before a deal is reached.
Last Tuesday, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi stressed his
country’s concerns, warning, “Nobody will be permitted to take a single drop
of Egypt’s water, otherwise the region will fall into unimaginable
instability.”