Egypt threatens war amid Renaissance Dam dispute

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry has confirmed that progress to resolve the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) crisis remained stalled after Addis Ababa rejected it's requests. A meeting Kinshasa will be hosted by Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi, who is also the chairman of the African Union. Egypt and Sudan had previously urged the Congolese government to help mediate talks on the dam, as they seek to settle their years-long dispute over the project.

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, a 1.1-mile-long concrete colossus, is set to become the largest hydropower plant in Africa. Across Ethiopia, poor farmers and rich business executives alike eagerly await the 5 gigawatts of electricity officials say the dam will ultimately provide.

Egypt continues to flex it's musle threathening to blow up the dam. Any Egyptian airstrike on the facility—of the sort Trump speculated about—would lead to a military conflict between Egypt and Ethiopia. In fact, before such a conflict got underway, the airstrike itself would most likely wreak havoc in the immediate vicinity of the GERD, which is located in Ethiopia’s western Benishangul-Gumuz regional state, on a site that stands only 15 kilometers from the border with Sudan. Were Egypt to destroy the facility in whole or even just in part, flooding is a probable outcome. This would have a disastrous effect on communities in the Ethiopian-Sudanese borderlands.

The first filling was carried out in 2020 with 4.9 billion cubic meters. Currently, Ethiopia intends to do the second filling in July with at least 13 billion cubic meters. It is noted that the water shares of Egypt and Ethiopia are 55.5 billion cubic meters, and 18.5 billion cubic meters, respectively.