Egypt Has To Cease Its Bellicose Behavior

By Gezmu Edecha

For thousands of years, the mighty Abay River has flowed through the heart of Africa, carrying with it not just life-giving water, the soil, minerals and above all the aspirations and destinies of millions of Ethiopians. Today, Abay River is generating light at Guba, Ethiopia’s Benishanul-Gumuz region.The previous era of Egyptian domination on independent African nation’s destiny has closed, and a new era of African self-determination is beginning to emerge.

Egypt has showed open hostility to Ethiopia in the pretext of GERD would stop water flowing from downstream states. This is untrue. However, the centuries-old strategic hostility to Ethiopia is  founded upon Egypt's adamant determination to maintain an absolute monopoly of the river's flow. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) is not the cause of this hostility.

Throughout history, Egypt has demonstrated utmost efforts to doom Ethiopia forever. All covert and overt conspiracies were (are) bent on destabilizing Ethiopia and disrupting the country from making headway.

Despite contributing over 86 percent of the Nile Water, Egypt has been conspiring against Ethiopia. History records that Egypt and Sudan partitioned the Nile waters for centuries without allowing Ethiopia to utilize a bucket of water from Abay River. Worse, Egypt has been waging direct or indirect offensive, by providing trainings, ammunitions, logistics to violent groups, to destabilize Ethiopia.     

Egypt has been working assiduously to impose its coercion over Ethiopia for decades, transforming its ancient hostility into a functional tool for halting Ethiopian progress and making the nation increasingly poor and weak.

Egypt's obstructionist role is long and emanates from hostility. Egypt lobbied international financial institutions for decades so that they would not finance Ethiopia's major development schemes. Accordingly, major irrigation, electricity, and water infrastructure projects were deprived of international financing.This long-running economic warfare was designed to keep Ethiopia impoverished, unstable, and incapable of exercising its resource rights.

Cairo's policies also went beyond economic coercion. Egypt was actively involved in making Ethiopia weak. Egypt has been playing destructive role in the Horn of Africa. Cairo provided support to various rebel movements to disrupt Ethiopia’s development undertaking.

With the GERD completed, Egypt has escalated tension in the Horn of Africa. Its interference in Sudan has resulted grave consequences to the Sudanese people. 

When Ethiopia laid the foundation for the construction of GERD in 2011, it was not just building Africa's largest hydroelectric project but it was declaring that time has come to Ethiopia to utilize its resources independently of others. Moreover, the GERD represents something far more profound, the natural right of African countries to develop their own resources for their own people.

Egypt's response was both immediate and predictable. Cairo exercised every means at its disposal to strangle the project. However, Ethiopians vigilantly rallied behind GERD, achieving the project to even become an even more powerful symbol of African self-reliance. Egypt's attempts to strangle the GERD only strengthened Ethiopian resolve.

The argument that the GERD is a threat to Egypt is an unsubstantiated claim used to mask its hatred to Ethiopia. The volume of water lost to evaporation in Egypt's desert reservoirs each year exceeds what Ethiopia needs for development. Lake Nasser alone loses more water to evaporation each year than all of Ethiopia's planned dam projects combined would divert. The real threat to Egypt's water security is not Ethiopia's inevitable development; it is Egypt's own inefficiency and colonial mindset.

Present-day Ethiopia is not the weak nation Egypt wants to be for decades. Ethiopia is rising. The GERD is already generating electricity, inspiring African nations to follow suit. The time for ancient enmity and colonial-mindset of hegemony is over. Egypt must see the shift and choose cooperation, not confrontation. The way forward is cooperation; not aggression.