March 22 is World Water Day, a United Nations holiday that aims to spark discussion on the importance of freshwater and the sustainability of freshwater resources.

For Egypt, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) stands as one of the country’s most pressing water issues. Controversy has surrounded GERD since construction on the project began in 2011, and while the dam is expected to be completed in 2017, negotiations between Egypt and Ethiopia are ongoing.

It is believed by many Ethiopians that Egypt has captured their Blue Nile waters, established its ancient civilisation and present renaissance, leaving them in poverty and deprivation. This is not true; Ethiopia has built a great history and civilization in East Africa. Currently, Ethiopia is trying hard to revitalize and develop its security in the region, as well as promote the vision of electrical links between its dams and neighboring countries to export electricity, just like the Congo in West Africa.

Unfortunately, Ethiopia, like many others, believed that Egypt after the 2011 unrest would be too overwhelmed to fight for its water rights and made sure to use that opportunity and lay down the cornerstone of the Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile in April 2011.

In November 2019, Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia agreed to a time frame for the negotiations under the supervision of the United States of America and the World Bank, with the aim of reaching an agreement on the rules for filling and operating the dam so as not to cause significant harm to the downstream countries. The negotiations continued with positive statements from all participants, until we Ethiopia did not attend the last session in Washington in February 2020, and announced its sudden withdrawal from the negotiations.

Recently, the Ethiopian media has repeatedly stated that Ethiopia’s plan was initially to fill the Renaissance Dam in three years, but agreed to Egypt's request to extend the period to seven years, in order to not harm Egypt, which will cause tremendous losses in the dam's electricity sales during this period.
The truth is that the Ethiopian demand to fill a dam of this magnitude in three years is a provocative request, whereby Ethiopia seeks to deepen its policy of domination in the region. The dam has a capacity of 74 billion cubic metres, and filling it over three years requires 25 billion cubic metres annually, in addition to 3 billion cubic metres lost annually to evaporation from the reservoir surface, meaning, storing 28 billion cubic metres annually from the river’s natural flow.

The GERD will supposedly generate 12,000 gigawatts of electricity annually, meaning that the annual electricity production of the Renaissance Dam will reach 12 billion kilowatt-hr. The price of electricity in Ethiopia for household use is only one US cent, and the commercial price is 1.8 cents per kilowatt-hour, making the average local price (domestic and commercial) about 1.4 cents/ kilowatts-hour.
This means that if the electricity of the Renaissance Dam is used solely within Ethiopia, then the total revenue of electricity production is about $160 million annually, which will not be enough to cover the expected annual expenses for operating and maintaining the dam and paying the annual instalments for the dam loans.