Egypt’s Last Chance

What options does a nation have when its future depends on another country’s decisions about a resource the other country controls? That’s what Egypt has to figure out. Ethiopia’s decision to build a dam on the Blue Nile threatens Egypt’s freshwater supplies. To stop the project, Cairo has tried rattling sabers at Addis Ababa, or attracting the support of a major power, but to no avail. What it has left, as stated in GPF’s 2021 forecast, is to lean on local partners and encourage Ethiopia’s ethnic divisions to try to secure for itself a better negotiating position with Addis Ababa. Whether this course of action can or will work is an open question, but other options are in short supply. A Lifeline In a country that is almost entirely desert, the Nile River is a natural lifeline. Over 90 percent of Egypt’s population lives along the banks of the river and its delta. Yet of the Nile River’s two major tributaries, the one that contributes roughly 85 percent of the water flowing into Egypt, the Blue Nile, starts far away, in the highlands of Ethiopia, before traversing through Sudan and finally into Egypt. And this supply is in jeopardy because […]