The Policies to resolve the conflict between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia to control the waters of the Nile River

The Nile River, which the ancient Egyptians considered a source of all life and follows a northwest direction by establishing fertile all the valleys of North-East Africa and always from the day of the planet’s existence, defining a major role in the course of human civilisation continues to be the subject of a very complex and old conflict between three African countries.

Last week the foreign ministers of these three African countries were admitted to the White House in Washington D. C.  by President Donald Trump who assured them that he will do all he can to bring a viable solution about the conflict that concerns the largest hydroelectric dam in Africa and specifically to the Nile River.

The foreign ministers of Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia who met with President Trump and based on their press announcements agreed to come to an agreement by January (15/1/2020) and regarding the GERD-Africa’s largest hydroelectric dam built on the Nile River.

by Thanos S. Chonthrogiannis

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The geography and history of the conflict

The Nile River is formed by two smaller rivers. From the Blue Nile River that springs from Ethiopia and from the White Nile River that springs to Khartoum. These two rivers unite and form the Nile River passing through Sudan and Egypt and out into the Mediterranean Sea.

The conflict between these three states-Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia-starts from the announcement of Ethiopia that it will build in the Blue Nile River a gigantic hydroelectric power plant-named Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD)-with a maximum production capacity of 6.45 Gigawatts. Its construction is estimated to cost $4 billion and is expected to produce electricity by the end of 2020 and will be fully operational by 2022.

This fact evokes a thimyality in Egypt and since Egypt depends almost 90% on the water and its irrigation from the waters of the Nile River. Egypt is already experiencing prolonged periods of water scarcity, and climate change with the Egyptians, to believe that the drastic constraint that will be caused in the waters of the Nile River due to this gigantic dam will further exacerbate the prolonged crisis of water scarcity in the country.

At the same time in a report of the UN World Food Program (www.wfp.org)  about climate change says that Egypt is expected to lose more than 30% of the food it produces by 2040 if temperatures rise due to climate change.

Suggested solutions for this conflict

Egypt-Sudan

It is sensible that Egypt’s concerns are trying to make a commitment from Ethiopia about the size of the required quantity needed for the population and its economy and independently if Ethiopia on its part does not want to commit to something like that.

But through crises, opportunities are created. Opportunities that, when followed by a program, can provide the necessary solutions. In this case, Egypt should create all those infrastructures which will provide it with a seamless flow of water and beyond the water flows of the Nile River to date, which specific new water flows will used exclusively for the irrigation of its agricultural and livestock industry, without this excluding the coverage of part of the needs for the water supply of its population.

More specifically, the Government of Egypt (the same strategy applies to Sudan) in collaboration with local engineers, with the Polytechnic Universities of Egypt and with specialized companies from abroad should launch the construction of large infrastructures sea water desalination in Egypt. Such infrastructures should be created both in Northern Egypt (on the Mediterranean Sea coast) and in South-Eastern Egypt on the coast of the Red Sea.

In addition, Egypt needs to finance and develop the construction of a gigantic irrigation system that will transport the produced potable water (after the application of the desalination process) from the specific infrastructures to the crops of the Southern and Western Egypt and more generally in the whole of the country’s crops.

Egypt as a country does not need to build a new hydroelectric dam for energy production and since they have recently been discovered in the Egyptian Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of the Mediterranean Sea giant-sized underwater gas deposits that will be able to decades to conserve energy throughout the country and its population.

What is needed for the economy of Egypt is the construction of a gigantic size (in the production of potable water) desalination infrastructures. Even if it were not the construction of this gigantic dam in Ethiopia, sooner or later Egypt would be forced to construct these desalination infrastructures due to future climate change.

With the construction of these desalination infrastructures, Egypt is gradually becoming independent of the “precious gold” of Africa which is water and specifically from the waters of the Nile River. Even if the annually per capita quantity of water is reduced below 500m³ having Egypt (and Sudan respectively) succeed in the complete replacement of the Nile River water used for irrigation of agriculture and of the country’s livestock, there will be no problem as to the water needs of its population.

In addition, we should add that the Egyptian government should proceed to new agricultural reform after it has managed through the construction of irrigation networks to transform the Egyptian desert regions (Egyptian Sahara) into arable land and to sell them to by profession farmers of the country.

More on the rural reform of Egypt please read the analysis titled “Policies to reduce increased poverty rates in Egypt“. For the development of African countries such as Ethiopia, Sudan, Malawi and more generally for the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa please read the analysis titled “Policies to successfully tackle poverty in Malawi‘.  

This strategy-policy is a one-way street for both Egypt and Sudan, where this should also be the case for the construction of desalination infrastructures on the Soudan’s shores in the Red Sea.

Ethiopia

On the other hand, Ethiopia as a land-territorial country that does not have access to the sea cannot implement this strategy and quite rightly the Ethiopian government follows the strategy of the construction of the specific hydroelectric dam that will feed both energy and water flow the irrigation and water supply of its country.

Certainly, the strategies proposed by The Liberal Globe for Egypt and Sudan have the cost of rebuilding all these proposed infrastructures, but they need to be done to move forward in the future all these three countries together without conflicts.