Hydropolitics within Africa

Looking to the future, these three countries have to find a way to share the Nile’s resources equitably, or risk worse political relations, and conflict with the other riparian countries. The historical allocation of water on the Nile is from a colonial era, not representative of water and development needs of the 11 riparian countries in a modern world of growing water insecurity and greater unpredictability of precipitation events due to climate change.   A potential way for cooperation on the Nile basin could be the idea of benefit-sharing. This was proposed by Rawia Tawfik and tries to ‘broaden the scope of benefits’ to promote cooperation over the focus on water allocation that dominates the discourse on the basin ( Tawfik, 2016 ). This could be sharing the financial costs of the GERD between the downstream states and Ethiopia, which would mean joint ownerships so that the use of the Dam could be managed with all country’s stakes accounted for ( Tawfik, 2016 ). However, th...

  Now that I’ve discussed the opinions of all three countries, I will look at the potential outcome for Egypt and Sudan given a drought with the GERD. It is important to note that the simulation of this occurring is dependent on many key factors that are difficult to predict, such as rainfall and flow of the water in the basin after the reservoir is full. The article I’m using takes ‘the 1972-1987 series of low flows’ and uses the outcomes to model the effect of a similar drought with this Dam as well. Egypt is home to the High Aswan Dam (HAD) which was opened in 1970 and was built for both irrigation and hydroelectric power purposes. According to the article the storage of the HAD reservoir will be higher during the drought compared to if the GERD wasn’t built, which would actually result in higher water availability. Figure 4 shows during the drought the Egypt shortage tends to be lower with the GERD, as well as in drought recovery. However, during the peak of the drought the ...

  Like Egypt, Sudan rely on the Nile for agriculture purposes, and have generally been in agreement with Egypt about the threat that the GERD represents. However, for Sudan the Dam presents an opportunity to improve access to hydroelectric power and reduce the impact of flooding, which could get worse with precipitation events becoming more erratic ( Siddig et. al, 2021 ). Sudan is in a tricky political position where they don’t want to ruin their relationship with Egypt or Ethiopia, but at the same time want the obtain the hydroelectric power from the GERD, as well as continue to receive their quota of water from the Nile ( Otinov, 2022 ). This situation where they stand to both gain and lose something from the Dam puts them in a position where if they pick a side, political relations could be permanently frayed.   Another point to note is that a news report from January 2023 said that Sudan’s leader was in agreement with Ethiopian views about the Dam, but this comes aft...