By RFPosted on 06-10-2019Modified on 06-10-2019 at 00:43
Negotiations around the Renaissance dam are deadlocked.
On Friday and Saturday, ministers from Sudan, Ethiopia and Egypt were in Khartoum to discuss the construction of this unique infrastructure in Africa, which will be able to produce 6500 MW. The project is entering its last straight line and the Egyptians, who are downstream of the river, fear being harmed . They accuse the Ethiopians of being inflexible.
After the failure of September, the negotiations are blocked again . Despite two days of work by scientists, followed by 48 hours of debate between ministers from all three countries, the talks failed.
The Sudanese Minister of Irrigation has certainly made some progress, but according to Yasser Abbas, the differences continue around the filling of the reservoir and the operating rules of the dam.
Egypt, for whom the waters of the Nile are vital , fears that a filling too fast does not make him lose thousands of jobs, penalizes his agriculture and reduces his resources. Cairo also wants to put its engineers on the job site to monitor the process.
At the end of this new round of talks, the Egyptians blame Ethiopia. According to them, Addis Ababa has hardened its positions, refusing to talk about the operating rules of the dam, and severely limiting the scope of the talks.
The Ethiopians have certainly tried a counter-proposal, but it " contradicted the agreements reached, " according to Mohammed El Sebai, spokesman of the Egyptian Ministry of Irrigation. Egypt is now calling for external mediation. Many evoke the United States in the role of arbitrator.
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Mega-dam on the Nile: Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia find an agreement
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