Egypt & the Horn of Africa

The statements made and opinions expressed are solely the responsibility of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Security in Context network, its partner organizations, or its funders.

By Sherif Mansour

Introduction 

The dispute over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) between Egypt and Ethiopia highlights the challenges of modern diplomacy in an increasingly multipolar world. More specifically, this conflict raises questions about the future of water security and climate threats amidst greater geopolitical competition among autocratic regimes facing little internal or international accountability.

In this article, I analyze the conflict over the GERD from a regional perspective. I draw on interviews with a diverse set of experts from Ethiopia, Egypt, Sudan, and Yemen, including activists, journalists, writers, and former government officials. I also examine reports from international and local human rights groups and public statements made by various government officials. I argue that the path forward on the GERD dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia will require a broader regional approach rather than narrow bi-lateral one focusing on the water dispute, but provide an analysis from a regional perspective, while also situating the same analysis within a consideration of great power competition. Hence, the article looks at both challenges and opportunities, while prioritizing public accountability and people-to-people diplomacy to address shared challenges, including climate change, dam safety, and environmental risks.

FOURTEEN YEARS OF RUNNING IN CIRCLES

The Stakes:

For over fourteen years, Egypt and Ethiopia have faced growing tensions over Ethiopia’s decision to build the GERD, the largest hydroelectric dam in the African continent. The GERD promises to give landlocked Ethiopia greater control over the freshwater of the Nile, though the government’s primary motivation is to expand electricity to its domestic population, as well as to neighboring countries in exchange for greater Red Sea trade routes. Egypt has its own hydroelectric dam downstream¹—the Aswan High Dam—but, unlike Ethiopia, depends on the Nile for 90% of its household and agricultural water needs, while the Ethiopian population depends on smallholder rainfed agriculture. Sudan is also heavily reliant on the river though it also has other fresh water sources. The GERD threatens to give Ethiopia up to 80% control over the Blue Nile’s water for both Egypt and Sudan. 

Egyptian and Ethiopian government officials have often framed the conflict over the GERD—and thereby access to water, electricity, and trade routes—as a matter of national security. Both Sudan and Egypt have raised concerns about Ethiopia’s lack of transparency² around their measures to mitigate the high environmental and man-made risks of a dam of this size. Meanwhile, Ethiopia has pushed back against Egypt’s “aggressive” attempts³ to share control over the dam along with Sudan. These claims are made all the more serious by interlocking internal and regional dynamics that put serious economic, military, and political pressures on both countries as they vie for greater regional power and brush up against other rising powers (i.e. UAE and Turkey) and competing global hegemons (i.e. Russia and the U.S.). 

To date, the two governments have managed to maintain a fragile stalemate, built upon exchanged threats, direct diplomacy, and various mediation attempts by global powers and institutions. However, the potential for military conflict between these two heavily armed, repressive governments remains very real. Given the broader context, the consequences of such a conflict would be disastrous for people across the region and beyond.

In January 2024, Egypt and Ethiopia joined the BRICS economic bloc. Studying the tensions between Egypt and Ethiopia therefore provides an opportunity to examine the future of South-South cooperation among countries that are both U.S. allies and BRICS members. BRICS is now at odds with U.S. President Trump, who threatened 100% taxes against its members.⁴ In addition, it is possible that Egypt may pursue a more aggressive policy with Ethiopia, in return for collaboration with U.S. priorities on Gaza.⁵ Egypt’s decision⁶ in summer 2024 to deploy troops to Somalia further raises the stakes for the conflict to become militarized. 

A Timeline of the Stalemate: 

• 2011:  Ethiopia announced the dam project construction  
• 2015:  Limited⁷ agreement of Declaration of Principles signed by Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan  
• 2019 - 2020: US and World Bank mediation failed to reach further agreement 
• 2020 - 2021: Russia⁸ and other third parties including the United Arab Emirates⁹ fail to broker a deal as well 
• 2021: The UN Security Council urged¹⁰ the parties to continue negotiations with the African Union 
• 2021 - 2023: The African Union failed¹¹ to reach an agreement after four rounds of negotiations 
• 2024: Ethiopia announced that the dam construction is nearing completion.    

A Current Stalemate and Potential for Escalation:

In October 2024, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced before his country’s parliament that the GERD’s construction was nearly¹² complete.¹³ He asserted that the dam “will not harm the downstream countries,” without giving any more details or guarantees, promising that “Ethiopia will release water to Sudan and Egypt if a shortage arises.”  

While seeming to address his neighbors’ fears, Abiy also asserted that “Ethiopia will not permit any threats to its sovereignty,” making the point that the country had succeeded in pushing back Egypt’s military threats, alongside its attempts to involve¹⁴ the United States and other allies into pressuring Ethiopia to accept an agreement of joint management of the dam with Egypt and Sudan.

In Cairo, Aiby Ahmed’s announcement only confirmed Egypt’s fears, expressed a month earlier by its Foreign Minister Badr Abdelaty when he complained¹⁵ to the United Nation’s Security Council that “Addis Ababa only intended to use negotiations as a cover to create a fait accompli without genuine political will to resolve the issue.”  

At the present moment, the completion of the GERD appears not to pose an immediate threat to Egypt in terms of its access to water. Many of the experts I spoke to agreed that unexpected heavy rain seasons in recent years and certain mitigatory steps¹⁶ taken by the Egyptian government have meant that Ethiopia could fill its lakes from the dam without causing Egypt a major water shortage. Ethiopia has also made the case to its neighbors that its lush, high, mountainous terrain better protects the waters of the Nile from evaporation than Egypt’s hot, desert lands.

“The impact on Egypt is [currently] nominal, but not zero,” Mequanint Mequanint told me in our interview. Mequanint is an Ethiopian researcher studying at Notre Dame University, who also served his country as a diplomat in Washington D.C. and as a journalist.

Ahmed Maher, an Egyptian democracy activist who played a prominent role during the Egyptian uprising in 2011 and who now heads Monakh Green Future environmental group, disagrees. He told me that Egypt’s recent attempts to find underground water reserves and desalination methods, along with better watering methods for their crops, points to their existing water vulnerabilities. According to Maher, water shortages in recent years have led to farmers in Upper Egypt using sewage water, which reduced crop yields and increased the internal migration of farmers to the capital, Cairo. It has also reduced these farmers’ ability to raise cattle and thus put pressure on already high food prices. 

Where the experts I spoke to seemed to agree is that the real threat for both countries is a prolonged drought or alternately, extreme flooding, which may cause a dam failure in GERD. Yasir Mohamed, the former Sudanese minister of irrigation and water resources for the transitional government of Sudan from 2019 to 2021, mentioned that the conflict over the GERD is 90% political because the technical and legal issues have been largely agreed upon by both sides. The remaining (technical) dispute in his view is about who gets to refill their lakes first in case there is a long-term drought, as was the case in the 1980s.

Egypt’s Foreign Minister has gone on the record to claim that even a 2% decrease¹⁷ of access to the Nile could result in the loss of 200,000 acres of land. Such a decrease would be very likely in the case of a drought. 

Meanwhile, human-led climate change is already causing both extreme drought and flooding in the wider region. In July 2024, the World Health Organization warned¹⁸ that millions of people across the Horn of Africa are facing acute hunger as the region faces one of the worst droughts in four decades. A year before, the British World Weather Attribution group issued a report that the Horn of Africa has seen the worst droughts since the 1980s and that they were made 100 times more possible¹⁹ because of climate change.²⁰ Between 2020 and 2023, different regions in Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan, Kenya, and Somalia suffered from drought-like conditions, while other parts of these same countries suffered²¹ from debilitating flash floods. 

Extreme flooding combined with a potential lack of maintenance or safety precautions make hydroelectric dams particularly dangerous. Around the world, dam failures have had catastrophic effects, wiping out entire communities. Most recently, in September 2023, two dams in Libya²² collapsed, killing thousands and displacing tens of thousands more. Scientists globally warn that a lack of transparency and investment in the maintenance of dams makes them especially vulnerable. The Netherland-based Institute for Water Education has similarly warned²³ that Sudan’s Jebel Aulia Dam is facing a looming collapse due to a lack of maintenance and the possibility of violent clashes among Sudanese rivals. 

With the GERD, the growing environmental risks of drought and flooding and questions around dam safety are heightened by the political and geopolitical context. In the next section, I draw attention to the political tensions inside these two countries as well as broader regional and international dynamics, which make the current stalemate over the GERD fragile and potentially dangerous. 

A LACK OF ACCOUNTABILITY – AT HOME OR ABROAD

Unstable Tyrants at Home and Colonial Mindset Abroad

Though their political trajectories and histories are very different, both Egypt and Ethiopia are now led by repressive governments that have pursued unstable, violent policies at home and abroad—conditions, in short, that make the type of transparent, multilateral path needed to avoid disaster around the GERD all the more difficult. 

Ethiopia has experienced a dramatic democratic freefall²⁴ after initial hopes for the country’s future when Abiy Ahmed came to power in 2018. Instead, his government waged a bloody two-year war in the northern Tigray region, which has killed over half a million people and caused a massive humanitarian crisis. Human rights groups condemn the government for continuing to violently suppress²⁵ its people while widely censoring the press.²⁶

Egypt’s military-led government maintains a tenuous hold over its large, restless, and youthful population after the democratic uprisings that ousted Hosni Mubarak in 2011. President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s heavy-handed repression, corruption, and regional policies (particularly toward Palestine) have made him and his government increasingly unpopular at home. Egypt has maintained a spot on the ten worst jailers²⁷ of journalists list, produced by the Committee to Protect Journalists since el-Sisi came to power in 2013. In addition to the country’s widespread repression, the government also faced militant groups associated with the Islamic State, who have re-escalated violence²⁸ in the Sinai—a region particularly vulnerable to flash floods.²⁹

In both countries, problems or heightened tensions related to GERD will likely exacerbate already existing conflicts and growing popular resentment against these governments’ repression. Based on my interviews with Egyptian and Ethiopian experts, I would argue that there is very little public buy-in or accountability for their governments’ responses to the construction of the GERD on either side of the dam, even though ordinary people will pay the greatest price for any potential disasters caused by the dam or by a military conflict that arises as a result. 

It is no coincidence that, in 2020, Egypt labeled the GERD as one of the top forbidden sensitive topics³⁰ for the media [to report on?] by the country’s media regulator. Similarly, Abel Asrat, an Ethiopian media consultant who identifies as pro-peace and pro-human rights, told me that for decades, both Egypt and Ethiopia have used rhetoric and tensions surrounding the dam to divert attention from domestic challenges. He says that the timing in which Ethiopia chose to announce the construction of the dam—during Egypt’s Arab Spring uprising—raises questions about whether the Ethiopian government wanted to distract from a potential uprising inside the country by focusing its people’s attention on an external issue.  

Meanwhile, the same undemocratic, violently securitized logics that have led Ethiopia and Egypt to oppress their own populations at home also extend to their foreign policy and geopolitical rivalries in the Horn of Africa. Not surprisingly, both Cairo and Addis Abba accuse the other of having a “colonial mindset” when it comes to the region, accusing each other of hegemonic intentions to extract resources and having privileged access to the river. 

With the completion of the dam, Ethiopia's position solidified them as East Africa's primary energy producer. In January 2024, Ethiopia signed an agreement with Somaliland³¹ to build a military port in exchange for electricity, which provides landlocked Ethiopia with access to the Red Sea Ethiopia is already benefiting financially from its electricity exports to Sudan and Djibouti,³² and is planning to export more electricity³³ in exchange for more favorable economic and trade deals with Kenya and Tanzania in the coming years.

In June 2024, Egypt signed an agreement with the Somali government to send arms and deploy troops³⁴ to the country, representing the first military partnership between these two countries in four decades.³⁵ The intention of the Somali government was to replace Ethiopian forces in the newly revamped African Union peacekeeping mission (AUSSOM) that became operational on January 1, 2025. The decision alarmed many people in the region because of its implications for the region’s fragile security, given that Egyptian troops would be placed in closer proximity to Ethiopian territory. At the same time, the potential withdrawal of Ethiopian troops from Somalia has led some to argue that the militant group Al-Shabab could be emboldened³⁶ to expand its reach in the country and more widely in the region by deepening its alliance³⁷ with the Yemeni Houthis group.

Both Egypt and Ethiopia are backing competing forces in Sudan. Egypt has been arming³⁸ the Sudanese army and supplying it with Turkish-made drones and reportedly³⁹ using its fighter jets to bomb the forces of the Rapid Response Forces, which are backed by the Ethiopian government. 

Some in Egypt have criticized their government’s attempts over the past years to counter a rising Ethiopian power. Shadi Lewis Botros, an Egyptian novelist and writer, faced major criticism at home for arguing that Egypt’s history of excluding and fostering a colonial attitude towards Ethiopia was coming back to haunt them. He told me Egypt needed to adapt to the new reality. “Practically, the Egyptian state, away from propaganda and social media wars, had no solution but to conduct futile negotiations, giving diplomacy more and more chances, to say they are doing something.”  

Meanwhile, growing geopolitical competition between Egypt and Ethiopia—playing out in places such as Sudan—increases the risk of direct military confrontation if and when problems arise with the GERD. Azza Mustafa, a legal consultant with the Ministry of Irrigation in Sudan, told me that with Egypt and Ethiopia taking different sides in the civil war in Sudan, information has become harder to share.  She told me that before the civil war started in Sudan, Ethiopian authorities would regularly communicate technical data about the dam. But, at the moment, “you ask Ethiopia and hope for good luck.” 

A Different World Order

External pressure on Egypt and Ethiopia to maintain a diplomatic path forward over the GERD is also growing less and less likely given shifting regional and geopolitical dynamics, which have further securitized the Horn of Africa and escalated regional wars.

In the past, the U.S. tried to play a constructive role⁴⁰ alongside the World Bank in mediating tensions between Egypt and Ethiopia. As one of the largest military donors to both countries, the U.S. still holds considerable leverage over each of its allies. However, even recent attempts by the U.S. to put some pressure on either country for their domestic abuses have proven superficial at best. For example, the Biden administration briefly withheld⁴¹ some of its military aid to Egypt, only to reverse course in September 2024, announcing⁴² it would waive all of its human rights conditions. Similarly, in 2023, the U.S. threatened some of its military assistance to Ethiopia after it accused⁴³ the country of mismanaging⁴⁴ aid and committing war crimes⁴⁵ during the war against the Tigray region. In both cases, the U.S. prioritized its broader geopolitical interests—including supporting Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians and containing security threats in Somalia—over holding either government accountable for their human rights abuses at home. Ethiopia is a partner in Somalia’s counterterrorism efforts and they signed a peace agreement⁴⁶ in December 2024, with Turkey’s mediation. 

The U.S.’s approach to the wars in Sudan and Yemen further point to U.S. unwillingness to be an active mediator for peace and diplomacy. Over the past decade, the U.S. has dangerously outsourced its security policies in the Red Sea and Horn of Africa to its Gulf allies, namely Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which have their own interest separate from the U.S., but also similarly violent, expansionist aspirations. In Yemen, the U.S. actively armed and supported the UAE and Saudi in their bloody war⁴⁷ against the Houthis. Both Gulf countries have been accused of horrendous human rights abuses,⁴⁸ including recruiting underage mercenaries⁴⁹ from Sudan. Both countries for example sided with Egypt on its claims on the Nile to counter Ethiopia’s regional rise and continue to compete with Turkey over influence in the region’s Red Sea trade routes.

Afrah Nasser, a Yemeni non-resident fellow at the Arab Center in Washington DC told me, “The US and its allies want to dismantle the Houthis' military capabilities, but they lack sufficient intelligence and a clear foreign policy to achieve that. Instead, they seem to rely on the same tactic—airstrikes—that the Saudi-led coalition used for years without success, as we’ve seen Saudi efforts fail to dismantle the Houthis' military power."

Meanwhile, in Sudan, the Saudis and the Emirates continue to extract Sudan’s natural resources, while escalating the civil war that has claimed the lives of tens of thousands and forced millions to flee their homes. The UAE, in particular, has solidified its monopoly on Sudan’s⁵⁰ gold⁵¹ and agricultural exports at the same time it sends arms⁵² to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which have been accused of mass rapes and killings. When it comes to Ethiopia and Egypt, there is little to show that the UAE will play a constructive role in mediating peace between these two Nile powers. If anything, the Gulf country has been building its military bases across the Red Sea and Mediterranean, including in Somaliland, Eritrea, and northwest Egypt⁵³—further militarizing these zones.

Also filling in the vacuum left by the U.S. is Turkey, which has tried to assert its diplomatic and military power over the Horn of Africa, sponsoring an agreement⁵⁴ between the Ethiopian and the Somali governments over Somaliland, even while secretly sending its navy to Somali waters⁵⁵ in a move to also counter Ethiopia’s support for the break-away nation. Turkey also played a role in mediating⁵⁶ tensions between Sudan and the United Arab Emirates. However, Turkey’s role as peacemaker is yet to be proven across the region.

Russia has also further fueled the militarization of the region. It has alternated its support for Egypt and Ethiopia in the past, though it signed a major military agreement⁵⁷ with Ethiopia in 2021 to help Ethiopia win its war against Tigray. Similarly, Russia, through its Wagner paramilitary group, is trying to court Sudan’s government to revive an agreement⁵⁸ in 2023 to grant it naval access to the Red Sea. Even Iran has also attempted to expand its power in the Horn of Africa. The Islamic Republic supplied⁵⁹ arms to the Sudanese army in 2024 in hopes that it would have a Naval base and port access⁶⁰ to the Red Sea.

Ultimately, growing competition among these various governments in the Horn of Africa are a cause for concern. Not only are these rivalries fueling the militarization of the region, but the lack of accountability for governments such as Turkey, UAE, and Iran in places such as Yemen and Sudan make it clear they will not put any such pressures on Ethiopia or Egypt should a serious water crisis or conflict emerge around the GERD.

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OPPORTUNITIES AHEAD

While there are many environmental and geopolitical conditions that may escalate the conflict between Egypt and Ethiopia over the GERD, there are also opportunities that could help avoid such escalation. Firstly, Egypt and Ethiopia need to approach the dispute as a cross-regional one. Both countries have a regional role to play, and one with stakes for South-South cooperation as members of the BRICS economic bloc. Turkey, which is not a member of BRICS, is filling the space for diplomacy and economic collaboration for the moment. But an alternative perspective about the conflict grounded in people’s vision for their future is needed for any opportunity to materialize. 

Nearly all of the experts I spoke to brought up the possibility of greater economic cooperation and shared investments as an antidote to the bottomless investments in costly wars, particularly in Sudan and Somalia, which have not benefited either Egypt or Ethiopia. Second, there needs to be support for greater public accountability projects around the dam, including supporting citizen watchdog groups and promoting Track III diplomacy that brings together non-state actors (including scientists, journalists, and democracy activists) from all of the countries involved.

On the first point, Egypt and Ethiopia have been investing largely in militarized competition in the Horn of Africa and Red Sea, instead of finding places of shared economic opportunity and interdependence. In Sudan, they have supported different sides of the civil war—prolonging the conflict. Similarly, they have taken different sides in the conflict between Somalia and Somaliland. The results of these war investments have been an influx of refugees they cannot afford to sustain.

Before the war, Sudan was seen as playing a moderating role in the trilateral negotiations around the GERD. Selma Alrasheed, former legal consultant for the Sudanese Ministry of Irrigation who participated on behalf of Sudan in the African Union-sponsored negotiations with Egypt and Ethiopia, told me this moderation came from the fact that the average Sudanese citizen did not consider the dam dispute a national security issue, given that Sudan has large reserves of underground water. Its agriculture is mainly dependent on groundwater and seasonal rains. Alrasheed told me water is never the only factor or an alone issue. It can be just one factor in a conflict or the trigger for prolonged war. But it also can be a force for peace. It all depends on “what we invest in.”

In the future, as the threat of droughts increases, Alrasheed argued Sudan could be in a position to export agricultural goods to both Egypt and Ethiopia. Similarly, Ethiopian researcher Mequanint suggested that Ethiopia could export electricity to Egypt, as it does with its neighbors. Botros, the Egyptian writer, suggested that in the worst-case scenario, Egypt could rely on seawater desalination or could buy water from Ethiopia, as it does with almost everything else. Asrat suggested the two countries could make mutual investments in tourism, entrepreneurship, and cultural exchanges, as Turkey has done with Ethiopia in recent years.

The dam could be a shared opportunity. Mequanint suggests that the dam is important for Ethiopia’s national security because it allows the country’s economy to grow and economic growth to satisfy the needs of its young and growing population. “The dam gives Ethiopian people hope and opportunities,” he added. Botros agreed. He remembered how during former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s era when Egypt built its own Aswan dam in the 1970s, it lightened its villages as it deepened its economic cooperation with Africa. 

In terms of expanding public accountability projects and Track III diplomacy, this is an area where global institutions and organizations could play a more active, productive role. Given the imminent dangers of climate change and dam safety, citizen watchdog groups, including environmental groups from across the region, can work together across borders to monitor the GERD and demand greater government transparency. What these groups need is both funding from international groups but also protection from government abuse. The UN and governments with a strong environmental record can be key in demanding protection for such organizations. They can also host conferences and workshops that bring environmental activists, journalists, and experts from across the region together. This kind of Track III diplomacy will have the dual effects of creating greater cross-national cooperation and also increasing accountability for the governments around this controversial dam. Such initiatives should include the Nile Basin Initiative, a cooperative framework between 11 countries representing 10% of Africa’s area.

Citations:

1: The Nile is one of the few river systems that flows south to north. The Nile begins as two river tributaries that converge in Sudan. The GERD would control the flow of the Blue River tributary, which originates in the Ethiopian highlands.

2: Kandeel, Amal. (July 10, 2020) Nile Basin’s GERD dispute creates risks for Egypt, Sudan, and beyond, The Atlantic Council. Accessed from https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/menasource/nile-basins-gerd-dispute-creates-risks-for-egypt-sudan-and-beyond/

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5: This is according to the readout of a phone call between the two Presidents in early February 2025.

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Sherif Mansour is an Egyptian-American democracy and human rights advocate, best known for his work defending journalists and helping Arab Spring organizers, as well as for his research expertise in foreign policy. Most recently, he served as the Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, where he managed an international team of researchers and advocates on issues of press freedom, government censorship and surveillance, and journalist safety. Before CPJ, he worked as Senior Program Officer with Freedom House where he managed a multi-million dollar project training democracy activists across the Arab world. 

Over the past twenty years, Mansour has provided expert testimonies in Congress, published in the Washington Post, The New York Times, Newsweek, LA Times, Foreign Policy, and appeared live on multiple television outlets, including CNN, BBC, France 24, and Al Jazeera English. He has been recognized for his work by the Diplomatic Courier as a top foreign policy professional and was awarded a Tufts Alumni Award for his human rights work. 

He has a master’s in international relations from the Fletcher School at Tufts University, and a bachelor’s in education from Cairo’s Al-Azhar University. 

More: https://www.sherif-mansour.com/