(the first episode)
The story began in the days of Muhammad Ali Pasha, who realized the importance of the Nile River to support the Egyptian economy based on agriculture, and the importance of securing the sources of the Nile in the south, this was the motivation for launching his campaign to conquer Sudan in 1820 to secure the southern strategic depth of Egypt and to preserve water resources.
When Sudan was conquered, a governor was appointed for Sudan, organized it, divided it into districts, and made Khartoum the capital. However the colonial waves affected the entire continent, and Egypt and Sudan fell under British occupation, and Ethiopia under Italian occupation. Egypt tried to preserve Sudan, but Britain was able to withdraw the Egyptian army from Sudan.
After that, Sudan entered the stage of dual rule (Egyptian-British) until Sudan gained its independence according to the 1953 agreement.
In the meantime, a number of agreements were signed, the aim of which was to preserve water resources in the Nile Basin, and their essence was that no country would establish any facilities that would hinder the flow of the river or reduce its shares.
The agreements gave the downstream countries (Egypt and Sudan) the right to approve any construction on the course of the river and also determined the share of water for each upstream and downstream country (Egypt’s share was 55 billion cubic meters).
After the Nile Basin countries gained their independence, the issue of the agreements that were signed during the colonial period remained a matter of controversy.
In Ethiopia, in 1956, the Grand Dam project appeared for the first time, and studies continued until 1964 by the United States Bureau of Reclamation (one of the departments of the State Department) and the final location for the dam was chosen.
Of course, Ethiopia was unable to implement the project due to the right of prior notification to Egypt and Sudan (according to the agreements).
Some countries, led by Ethiopia, tried to evade the agreements on the pretext that these agreements were signed by colonial governments and therefore were not binding on independent countries because they did not have their decision at the time. Accordingly, all the obligations stipulated in these agreements are not binding. (Of course, this is contrary to international law.) Here they were trying to circumvent the division of resources, water shares, and the right to advance notification of projects (and this is the core of the Renaissance Dam crisis). During the sixties and even the nineties, they tried to back away from these agreements, but they could not.
To some extent, in the year 2001, preparatory negotiations began to establish the Nile Commission. These negotiations continued for 10 years.
And here the series of failures began… In light of Egypt’s withdrawal from Africa after the attempt to assassinate Mubarak in Ethiopia and the weakness of the Egyptian role in Africa, the pressure on Egypt was increasing… and its ability to negotiate was collapsing.
The beginning of the end in the final stage of negotiations was in May 2009 at the Kinshasa meeting, then in Alexandria in July 2009, and finally at the Sharm El-Sheikh meeting in April 2010, and this was the final nail in the coffin of the negotiations that lasted 10 years from 2001 to 2010.
In May 2010, 5 upstream countries individually signed the framework agreement in Entebbe to establish the Nile Basin Commission without taking into account the objection of the two downstream countries (Egypt and Sudan).
Ethiopia began the Renaissance Dam project…
In November 2010, the designs of the dam were completed.
On March 30, 2011, I announced the start of work on the project
On March 31 (one day after the announcement) a $4.8 billion contract was awarded without competitive bidding to the Italian company Salini Costruttori.
On April 2, 2011: Former Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi laid the foundation stone for the dam, and a rock crusher was constructed along with a small airstrip for rapid transportation.
On April 10, 2011: The Ethiopian Council of Ministers changed the name of the dam to be #GrandEthiopianRenaissance_Dam instead of the Millennium Dam or Project
In May 2011: After the visit of the popular diplomacy delegation, Ethiopia announced that it would share the dam’s plans with Egypt so that the extent of the dam’s impact on the downstream country could be studied.
In March 2012: The Ethiopian government announced an upgrade to the design of the dam’s power station, increasing it from 5,250 megawatts to 6,000 megawatts.
The dam construction work was scheduled to be completed in July 2019.