Abide by International Law Egypt through the 1959 agreement with Sudan have apportioned 100% of the Nile waters for themselves and have left behind the nine Nile Basin countries with zero meter cube allocation. That agreement is still valid and active for the two countries of Egypt and Sudan. So currently the rest of us, the nine countries, according to that agreement, have a zero meter allocation. So that is the status now in terms of utilizing the Nile waters. For example, the electricity coverage in Egypt is more than 98% while it is around 35% in Ethiopia. In terms of water use for irrigation also, Egypt has developed close to 4 million hectares of land; Sudan has developed close to 2 million hectares of land while Ethiopia has used only limited amount of its water resources. Also in all other upper basin countries, there are irrigation potential but the developed portion is very minimum. Therefore, in terms of energy generation and overall GDP Egypt has the largest share among all the Nile Basin counties. Ethiopia’s decision to build the Grand Ethiopia Renaissance Dam /GERD/ remains to be a matter of survival. Ethiopia, indeed, has undertaken some projects in the Blue Nile Basin such as Tana Beles Hydroelectric project which has a capacity to generate 460 MW, Fincha hydroelectric project and some irrigation projects around Lake Tana and Fincha. Nonetheless, these are not very substantial projects when compared with what has been developed over the past years in Egypt and Sudan. For the first time Ethiopia ventured to build GERD that is planned to generate some 6000 MW. This intention is misunderstood especially by Egypt that the project will
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Abyssinia Business Nework // ABN
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Egypt is afraid of the fact that this dam will generate a self-reliance psychology among other African countries to build their own dams with their own resources.
ልዩ እትም 2012 Special Edition of GERD 2020
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