The High Dam in Aswan

For many decades, Egyptians had sought ways to reduce their dependence on a river whose flow was dangerously erratic. There were years of destructive floods and years too dry to sustain the millions of rural Egyptians’ livelihoods. Variable amounts of rainfall to Ethiopia cause stunning differences in the amount of flooding seen farther down the course of the Nile. In a "lean year," such as 1913-1914, 12 billion cubic meters of flood water swelled the river. A "fat year," such as 1878-79, saw the level of the river increase by 155 billion cubic meters of water.

With Aswan high dam allowed Egypt to expand the area under irrigation by a third. Egyptian farmers could plant two crops a year. By 1970 when the dam was completed, the 2,100MW of power it generated supplied more than half of Egypt’s electricity needs. This history makes Egypt’s complaints about the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam look a little hypocritical. Ethiopia is emulating what Egypt did 60 years ago to boost its national development. Egypt’s most recent complaint is that, by filling the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam too fast, Ethiopia will deprive Egypt of essential water. Currently, Ethiopia proposes to fill the dam in four to seven years. But Egypt filled the Aswan High Dam, which stores three times as much water as the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, in just 6 years.

And Ethiopia’s dam could actually help Egypt save water. The guaranteed flow will allow Egypt to keep the Aswan Dam’s levels lower. This will reduce evaporation, through which the dam loses around 10% of the river’s water. Now that the filling of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam has begun, Egypt will have to recognise the right of the upstream countries to use some of the water that flows from their lands.

But unfortunately, Egypt’s official position has encouraged a bellicose populist nationalism that will be hard to calm. And the military rulers will have to explain why they failed to stop what they had said was a threat to the nation’s very survival. When Nasser took control of the Suez Canal he blocked Israeli ships from using it. That action, rather than the construction of the High Dam, is what led to the 1967 and 1973 wars with Israel and to continued regional conflicts.

If history repeats itself, it is likely that attention will shift from the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam to other political problems that Egypt faces. Meanwhile Sudan, placed between the new Ethiopian dam and Egypt, will benefit from expanded irrigation and some of the dam’s cheap electricity. Ethiopia will develop more of its water resources for agriculture. The dam’s electricity will power the Addis Ababa metro and the industry it hopes to attract.

So water and the Renaissance Dam, rather than becoming a cause for war, may yet be a source of peace and progress, as the Aswan High Dam has proved to be.