Ethiopia announced on Sunday September 10 that it had completed the filling of the “Great Renaissance Dam” that it built on the Nile, rekindling tensions with Egypt, which condemned a “unilateral” and “illegal” operation. Sudan, another country located downstream of this megadam presented as the largest in Africa, did not react on Sunday evening.

In recent years, Khartoum and Cairo, which see the dam as a threat to their water supply, have repeatedly called on Ethiopia to stop filling the “Grand Renaissance Dam” (GERD) reservoir pending a tripartite agreement on its operating methods.

“There were a lot of challenges, we were often pushed to back down. We had an internal challenge and external pressures. We reached [this stage] by facing God,” Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said on Sunday in a message posted on the social network X (formerly Twitter). “I believe we will complete what we have planned,” he said. The Prime Minister’s Office later posted several photos showing Abiy Ahmed at the dam site with a message in English: “Our national perseverance against all odds has paid off! »

“Illegal”, according to Egypt

The Egyptian Foreign Ministry denounced this operation. The “filling of the reservoir of the ‘rebirth dam’ without an agreement with the two downstream countries [Egypt and Sudan] is (…) illegal” and “will weigh” on the negotiations between the three countries, he asserted in a statement. Egypt is very concerned about this infrastructure because it depends on the Nile for 97% of its water needs.

With this mega hydroelectric dam (1.8 kilometers long and 145 meters high) capable of eventually generating more than 5,000 megawatts, Ethiopia intends to double its electricity production, to which only about half of its approximately 120 million residents currently have access.

Considered vital by Addis Ababa, the GERD, which cost around 3.5 billion euros, has been at the heart of a regional conflict since Ethiopia began its construction in 2011. Long deadlocked, negotiations between Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan resumed in Cairo on August 27, aiming to reach an agreement “taking into account the interests and concerns of the three countries”, the ministry of water and sanitation said. Egyptian irrigation.

A few weeks earlier, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sissi and Abiy Ahmed had given themselves four months to reach an agreement on the filling and operation of the dam, during a meeting on the sidelines of a summit of leaders Africans on the war in Sudan.

Khartoum’s position has varied in recent years. After several months of common front with Egypt in 2022, the Sudanese leader, General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhane, said last January that he “agreed on all points” with Abiy Ahmed on the GERD. But Sudan has been ravaged by a deadly conflict since mid-April.

Ethiopia, for its part, assures that its megadam, located in the northwest of the country about thirty kilometers from the border with Sudan, will not disrupt the flow of the river.