Egypt’s Water Policy: Waste at Home, Coercion on Ethiopia

                                             September 22, 2026 (ENA)

Egypt stands out for its chronic mismanagement of water resources, despite contributing virtually nothing to the flow of the Abay (Nile)—a striking paradox at the heart of the Nile debate.

For many hydropower analysts and transboundary water experts, water stored in Egypt’s downstream reservoirs suffers from high rates of evaporation due to the country’s hot desert climate.

For Fekahmed Negash, Chairperson of the Advisory Team on Transboundary Water and GERD at Ethiopia’s Ministry of Water and Energy, this downstream nation’s vast reservoir lies in Egypt’s hot desert environment and is exposed to substantial evaporation losses.

He estimated that the Aswan High Dam loses about 15 to 16 billion cubic meters of water annually through evaporation.

Contrary to popular belief, this hard fact and the UN’s designation of Egypt as a water-scarce country, the nation possesses immense water potential that remains hugely misunderstood.

Egypt has underground water enough for hundreds of years even if rain stops in Ethiopia for years.

Egypt wastes water and has some of the worst practices in doing so.

Egypt acts as if it has a swath of marshland and produces sugarcane and rice. What is appealing is that it wishes others not even to drink fresh water and produce cabbages for it to continue wasting water.

Egypt wants Ethiopia to forgo its development and wallow in poverty for Egyptians to enjoy affluence.

Egypt has proclivities of splashing water into a desert and creating sprawled cities, while it does not wish Ethiopians to have even light and stoves in their houses.

Egypt doesn’t know how to be grateful. They pretend they are scared of water scarcity, but they don’t wish to thank Ethiopia for planning more than 50 billion seedlings. Rather, it leaves no stone unturned to destabilize Ethiopia—what a twist.

Egypt believes it is a neighbor to Ethiopia because it considers Sudan just as an appendage. That’s why it is bent on dismantling Sudan using sellouts.

Egypt doesn’t wish any country on both sides of the Red Sea to thrive—what a brinkmanship!