![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Arab-News-96x96.png\"\/)
![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Arab-News-96x96.png\")
<\/p>\nBy\u00a0Dr. Abdellatif El-Menawy <\/p>\n
Key Takeaways:<\/p>\n
Ethiopia is treating the Blue Nile as leverage, not only as hydropower. Water Minister Habtamu Geleta\u2019s \u201ckeys to the Abay\u201d line, plans for Karadobi, Mandaya and Beko Abo (~$10.5bn, ~5,700 MW), and former minister Shiferaw Jarso\u2019s call for Egypt to pay for Nile water are read as a shift from one dam (GERD) to a reservoir network\u2014and toward a wider Red Sea\/Eritrea narrative.<\/p>\n
Upstream geography is not ownership. The author says Ethiopia may generate power but cannot alone set storage, filling, or release rules on a shared river; \u201cequitable use\u201d is not just rainfall share. Hydro dams do not \u201cconsume\u201d like irrigation, but they change\u00a0when\u00a0water arrives\u2014especially dangerous for Sudan without data, warning, and a binding operating deal. Charging for natural flow is rejected as turning the Nile into a toll road.<\/p>\n
Cairo\u2019s reply is framed as law plus development, not a ban on dams. Egypt cites prior notification and no significant harm, points to its own African hydropower and water projects, and wants full disclosure plus cumulative-impact review before lenders and contractors proceed. The contest now, the piece argues, is political: who sets the rules before the next concrete is poured.<\/p>\n
Disputes over rivers are rarely about water alone. They are also about power, geography and the rules that prevent one country\u2019s natural advantage from becoming another\u2019s permanent vulnerability. Recent Ethiopian statements suggest that the dispute over the Blue Nile is entering this more dangerous phase.<\/p>\n
Ethiopian Minister of Water and Energy Habtamu Geleta has said that the \u201ckeys\u201d to the Abay \u2014 Ethiopia\u2019s name for the Blue Nile \u2014 are now in Ethiopian hands and that the river moves according to Ethiopian decisions. The exact translation has been debated but the political meaning is unmistakable: Addis Ababa believes the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam has given it the physical ability to regulate the river and it intends to convert that ability into strategic leverage.<\/p>\n
The remarks accompanied renewed plans for three more hydroelectric projects: Karadobi, Mandaya and Beko Abo. Their projected cost is about $10.5 billion, with a combined generating capacity of some 5,700 megawatts \u2014 slightly more than the installed capacity of the Renaissance Dam itself.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The projects are not as advanced as some reports imply. There is no verified evidence of final construction contracts, identified financiers or major work beginning on the ground. Ethiopian assessments place them in the planning and procurement phase, with designs, costs and schedules still subject to change. Nevertheless, the intention is clear. Ethiopia is no longer thinking in terms of one dam but of a network of reservoirs capable of reshaping the management of the Blue Nile.<\/p>\n
This ambition has been accompanied by an increasingly assertive narrative. Shiferaw Jarso, a former Ethiopian water minister, has called on his government to seek compensation from Egypt for using Nile water, arguing that Ethiopia contributes about 86 percent of the river\u2019s flow. He later widened the accusation, claiming that Egypt had historically sought to weaken Ethiopia, deny it access to the Red Sea and support forces that contributed to Eritrea\u2019s separation.<\/p>\n
Jarso is no longer in government and his remarks should not be presented as a formal Ethiopian policy. Yet their repeated publication by Ethiopia\u2019s official news agency is significant. It suggests that the Nile dispute is being incorporated into a broader narrative of strategic encirclement involving the Red Sea, Eritrea and the regional balance of power.<\/p>\n
An international river does not belong to the state in which it rises. Geography gives an upstream country physical leverage but not legal title to the water. The Nile is a connected international watercourse. Decisions taken in the Ethiopian highlands affect Sudanese reservoirs, farms and communities before reaching Egypt, which depends almost entirely on the river for its freshwater.<\/p>\n
Ethiopia is entitled to generate electricity and develop its economy. It is not entitled to decide alone how a shared river will be stored, regulated or released. Nor can \u201cequitable and reasonable utilization\u201d be reduced to the amount of rainfall within each country. Equity must consider population needs, existing dependence, potential uses, available alternatives, environmental conditions and the consequences of one state\u2019s actions for others.<\/p>\n
These principles are inseparable from the duties to cooperate, exchange information, prevent significant harm and provide advance notification of projects with possible cross-border effects. Announcing three dams is not prior notification. Proper notification requires technical specifications, reservoir capacities, environmental assessments, filling schedules and operating rules. It must also explain how the proposed reservoirs would function alongside the Renaissance Dam, particularly during consecutive years of drought.<\/p>\n
Ethiopian officials correctly note that hydroelectric dams do not consume water in the same way as large irrigation schemes. Water can pass through turbines and continue downstream. But reservoirs alter the timing and management of flows. Filling periods, storage decisions, evaporation and drought policies determine how much water reaches downstream states and when.<\/p>\n
A coordinated chain of dams could bring shared benefits, including electricity, flood control and more predictable seasonal flows. An uncoordinated chain would create structural dependence. Egypt and Sudan would come to rely on decisions taken by an upstream government with which they have no binding operating agreement.<\/p>\n
For Sudan, the risks are especially immediate. Its dams and communities lie close to Ethiopia, leaving limited time to respond to sudden or uncoordinated releases. Regulation may benefit Sudan but regulation without reliable data, advance warning and agreed rules is not security. It is dependence presented as cooperation.<\/p>\n
The proposal that Egypt should pay for Nile water is even harder to defend. Rainfall over the Ethiopian highlands does not become a commodity owned by the Ethiopian state. Natural water crossing a border is not an export and a downstream country is not an importer. Countries may agree to buy electricity, finance watershed protection, build joint infrastructure or share economic benefits. These are legitimate forms of cooperation. They are fundamentally different from charging for the natural flow of a river. The Nile cannot be turned into a toll road.<\/p>\n
Egypt\u2019s latest response is therefore important because it begins to move beyond warnings. Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty and Water Resources and Irrigation Minister Hani Sewilam last week issued a joint statement combining legal opposition to unilateral action with a wider development strategy in the Nile Basin.<\/p>\n
The statement reaffirmed the principles of prior notification, consultation, agreement and the prevention of harm. It also highlighted an Egyptian financing mechanism for development projects, including dams, in the Southern Nile Basin, according to the priorities of those countries.<\/p>\n
This is a strategically important distinction. Egypt is not opposed to dams as such. Egyptian companies helped deliver Tanzania\u2019s Julius Nyerere hydropower project, while Cairo supports wells, flood protection systems, river facilities and water monitoring projects across Africa. Its objection is to the unilateral control of a shared international watercourse.<\/p>\n
Cairo should demand full disclosure of the Ethiopian projects and an independent assessment of their cumulative effects. Potential lenders, contractors and insurers must understand the legal and political risks of major infrastructure on an international river when downstream consequences have not been properly assessed.<\/p>\n
The immediate contest remains political rather than engineering or financial. No final financiers or construction contracts for the three new dams have been publicly confirmed. But the argument emerging from Addis Ababa is already clear: Ethiopia holds the keys, its highlands are the best place to store the water and Egypt must adapt, perhaps even pay.<\/p>\n
That proposition must be rejected. Ethiopia has a right to development but not to ownership of the Nile. The river\u2019s future cannot be determined by whoever pours the most concrete upstream. It must be governed by rules accepted by all those whose lives depend upon it.<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0Dr. Abdellatif El-Menawy has covered conflicts worldwide. He is the author of \u201cThe Copts: An Investigation into the Rift between Muslims and Copts in Egypt.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
About Arab News <\/p>\n
\n Arab News is Saudi Arabia’s first English-language newspaper. It was founded in 1975 by Hisham and Mohammed Ali Hafiz. Today, it is one of 29 publications produced by Saudi Research & Publishing Company (SRPC), a subsidiary of Saudi Research & Marketing Group (SRMG). <\/p>\n