Addis Ababa (Somalia Today) — Ethiopia has announced plans to build three new dams on the Blue Nile, triggering immediate anger in downstream Egypt, where officials warn the projects will sharply worsen an already existential water crisis.
Addis Ababa has already invited infrastructure companies to submit tenders for the three hydroelectric projects, according to a report by The New Arab.
The Ethiopian government says it will complete the dams within four to seven years and bring them into operation simultaneously.
The announcement opens a volatile new front in a long-running geopolitical feud between the two nations over the Nile’s shared waters.
Costing $3.5 billion each, the projects are meant to strengthen Ethiopia’s water management and renewable energy capacity in line with its national economic development plan.
Once operational, the dams will have a combined capacity of 5,700 megawatts, lifting Ethiopia’s national electricity generation by up to 25 percent.
Ethiopian authorities present the mega-projects as an assertion of sovereign development, saying they are essential for reducing poverty, boosting industrial production, and supplying clean energy across the wider Horn of Africa.
Radical change
However, Cairo tells a starkly different story.
Egyptian water specialists say the overlapping projects will drastically reduce the flow of the Nile, which now supplies roughly 98 percent of Egypt’s freshwater needs.
Abbas Sharaky, a professor of water resources at Cairo University, said the planned construction pointed to a “radical change” in the management of the Blue Nile’s waters.
“These dams will increase water scarcity in Egypt in a serious manner,” Sharaky said.
The new infrastructure will significantly expand Ethiopia’s water storage capacity, effectively giving the upstream state total control over the river’s flow to downstream nations, he warned.
“Apart from reducing the flow of the river’s water to Egypt, the three new dams will make the High Dam in southern Egypt less capable of generating electricity,” Sharaky added, referring to the Aswan High Dam.
“This will translate into a reduction in electricity generation in Egypt and economic losses.”
Water scarcity
Egypt is already water-poor, and its annual share of the Nile meets only a fraction of its fast-growing population’s needs.
Under a 1959 bilateral agreement with Sudan, Egypt receives 55.5 billion cubic metres of water each year, though upstream states have long refused to recognise the colonial-era quota.
The Egyptian government says it lost around 38 billion cubic metres of water between 2020 and 2022 alone as Ethiopia unilaterally filled the reservoir of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).
In January, Egypt’s Minister of Irrigation and Water Resources, Hani Sweillam, publicly demanded compensation from Addis Ababa for the shortfall.
To adapt to the limits imposed by upstream damming, Cairo has spent billions of dollars over the past decade on sewage treatment, seawater desalination plants, and water consumption rationalisation.
The government is also overhauling its network of agricultural canals and introducing modern irrigation technologies to preserve water for its vital farming sector.
Unilateral management
“The measures taken by the government in the past years have contributed to mitigating effects from the dam,” said independent water expert Noureddine Abdelmonem.
However, Abdelmonem voiced deep concern over Ethiopia’s “unilateral” management of the river system.
He said this approach had led to uncontrolled water discharges, at times causing flooding and economic damage in both Sudan and Egypt in recent years.
Nearly a decade of tripartite negotiations between Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan failed to produce a binding legal agreement on the operation of the GERD, a $4 billion project launched in 2011.
Cairo accuses Addis Ababa of using negotiations as a stalling tactic until the massive hydroelectric dam became an irreversible fact on the ground.
Regional standoff
The water crisis is now deeply entangled with a broader, increasingly militarised geopolitical standoff in the Horn of Africa.
Egypt sees Ethiopia’s recent push to establish a naval presence and secure Red Sea access as a direct threat to its national security and the vital Suez Canal shipping route.
That friction peaked after a controversial January 2024 memorandum of understanding between Ethiopia and the breakaway region of Somaliland granted Addis Ababa coastal access in exchange for possible political recognition.
In response, Egypt has launched a strategic encirclement campaign.
Cairo recently deployed troops to the Somali capital, Mogadishu, as part of the African Union Support and Stabilisation Mission (AUSSOM).
The deployment has come alongside arms shipments and common defence pacts with Ethiopia’s neighbours, moves widely seen as a deterrent to Ethiopian regional ambitions.
Meanwhile, Amani al-Taweel, an African affairs specialist at the Egyptian Council for Foreign Affairs, said Cairo was steadily increasing pressure through its growing military footprint and diplomatic lobbying.
“Cairo has made its position on the two issues clear to Addis Ababa in the past two years,” al-Taweel said.
“So, now the Ethiopians know well which course of action Egypt will take if its interests are not taken into serious consideration.”
Despite the threat of escalation, Ethiopia shows no sign of halting its Blue Nile master plan.
“Egypt has repeatedly clarified its opposition to the construction of dams on the Nile River without a binding legal agreement,” Sharaky said.
“The problem is, however, that Ethiopia treats the same river as a national resource, a perception that will fuel conflicts with other Nile basin states for a long time.”
