Africa’s Common Voice The over-stretched issues around the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) leave no eyewitnesses to the situation settled. Not long ago, African member states signed an agreement to accelerating intra-African trade and boosting Africa’s trading position in the global market by strengthening Africa’s common voice and policy space in global trade negotiations (AfCFTA), scheduled to commence on the1st of July. COVID-19 gives room to extend discussions on salient instruments to permit the full implementation of this agreement. Africa is still far away from the distant future to achieve Agenda 2063 albeit; we are progressively making decent strides towards achieving the Africa we want. Africa cannot afford to take the risk of our golden ticket to a defined and unified African Voice. The COVID
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-19 pandemic not only highlights vulnerabilities and deficiencies, however on the contrary, it just shows everyone how relevant AfCFTA is to Africa. As we see close in borders, restrictions on international travels, in most countries constraints on internal activities influencing global trade, decreasing supply chains. Lockdowns in Africa costs 2.5% ($65 billion) on our annual GDP. The Nile River is a long transboundary river, but also one of the most water-scarce river basins in the world. The geopolitical feud between Ethiopia and Egypt over claims of the share of the Blue Nile to build the dam, which worries downstream country Egypt if matters get out of the clutch is inescapable on Africa. It bears to mention there is a lot at stake. African geopolitics cannot catch up with the complexities of a ልዩ እትም 2012 Special Edition of GERD 2020
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revolution because of escalations from the feud in these challenging times. Over the last few decades, with particularly decisive changes in three years on the $4.8 billion project, the hydro-diplomacy on the Nile River basin has unrolled considerably. Current misconceptions surrounding the GERD’s purpose is a failure to establish a few basic facts and ensure the public has access to accurate information. Words and actions shape our reality. The stand-off on the progress of the GERD project is due claims such as this: Egypt is an intransigent country that refuses to allow Ethiopia to exploit its water resources and build dams to achieve development and generate electricity for the poor Ethiopian population deprived of services. The issue is highly politicized that “it seems to suppress legitimate engineering inputs and environmental
