On this day 25 years ago, the late President Mohamed Hosni Mubarak stood amid a crowd of ministers and statesmen, telling him that he had been subjected to an assassination attempt in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

When he spoke on July 26, 1995, Mubarak appeared calm and considered that those who tried to assassinate him were a group of "rabble", and he was not aware that they had hidden in a house rented by individuals of Sudanese nationality.

Despite the ousted president's insistence on minimizing the impact of his assassination attempt on more than one occasion, many observers of African affairs agreed that this incident changed the compass of Cairo and its index became completely far from the continent, which was among the factors that paved the way for Ethiopia to build The Renaissance Dam, which Egypt now complains about.

Before Mubarak

To understand the path Mubarak has followed in his dealings with Africa, we must return to the roots of the Egyptian-African relations that he established from his predecessors in the Republic of Officers, which was established after the coup against King Farouk on July 23, 1952, namely Presidents Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat.

During the Nasser era, Egypt pursued a strategy of revolutionary expansion with the countries of the continent, most of which were suffering from colonial decades and yearning for freedom. Cairo supported morally and materially the African liberation movements, until it became a safe haven for leaders and revolutionaries in the 1950s and 1960s.

Abdel Nasser opened the horizons of commercial exchange with several countries on the continent, and sent religious and educational missions to it, but rather assigned radio stations broadcasting in the languages ​​of different African countries.

This policy made building the High Dam in 1960 easy, and Ethiopia - which was opposed to it - could not persist in its opposition to the African support for Egypt.

As for Sadat, as he did with many issues, he pursued a policy different from that established by Nasser, and considered heading to the western camp a guarantee to preserve his rule and land, to begin the chapters of ignorance of the brown continent.

Even when Sadat wanted to have a voice in Africa, he supported the Popular Front for the Liberation of Eritrea in its efforts to secede from Ethiopia, which caused a lump in the throat of the Ethiopians.

Between opening and closing

Mubarak came to power in 1981, loaded with Sadati's legacy that ignores Africa and suffers from an Arab boycott after he signed the peace treaty with Israel in 1979.

It seems that the man decided to open up on the Arab and African levels, so the former returned to his former rule, while the second made steps before he froze after the assassination attempt.

During his first years in office, the ousted president visited several African countries and won major decorations from Niger, Mali and Central Africa in 1983 and 1984, and in 1989 he was awarded the Great Medal of Honor from Sudan.

These steps paved the way for Egypt to be elected twice to head the Organization of African Unity, which later became the African Union, in 1989 and 1993.

Thus, things were going in a quiet direction without Nasserite leadership or ignoring Sadat, but the assassination attempt that took place in Addis Ababa in 1995 made Mubarak enter Egypt in the tunnel of apathy with the countries of the continent.

Ignore Africa

Cairo was absent from the presidential representation in the African summits and ignored the countries of the continent as a market for export or import, to the extent that the trade exchange between the two parties did not exceed 1% in 2010, out of the total trade relations between Egypt and the outside world.

At the same time, Israel was weaving the threads of cooperation and interconnection with the countries of the continent - especially Ethiopia, the important power in East Africa - on the political and economic levels, which can be seen in any UN vote, as we find many African voices go in favor of Tel Aviv.

That journey of ignorance ended with the signing of the Framework Agreement for the Nile Basin Countries, known as the “Entebbe Agreement”, whose founding framework was signed in 2010 between Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Kenya, and it is one of the source countries of the Nile that has gathered many reasons that drive it away from Egypt.

The Entebbe Agreement stipulates ending the historical shares of the downstream states of Egypt (55.5 billion cubic meters) and Sudan (18.5 billion cubic meters), which gave Ethiopia the signal to start construction of the Renaissance Dam that will lead to a decrease in the share of Egypt, but will make Addis Ababa unilaterally governing the river in the years of drought.

Absence of vision

In his book published last year, "Helmy Shaarawy .. An Egyptian and African Biography," the founder of the Center for Arab and African Research, Helmy Shaarawi, confirms that the Mubarak period witnessed the neglect of the Egyptian administration for the African continent, and the absence of a strategic vision, with the absence of concepts of unity and meeting interests between the countries of the continent.

Shaarawi explains that Egypt's performance towards Africa during the Mubarak era was weak, which paved the way for Israel to infiltrate in the form of providing training for armies, especially the Republican Guard, and security and intelligence work, to assist a number of African countries in obtaining grants and loans from the World Bank and the International Fund.

The expert on African affairs, due to Addis Ababa's intransigence in the Dam Renaissance, attributed Cairo's lack of strengths on the continent that it once had, and its weak international role in general in front of what he described as the arrogance of Ethiopian power.

Did Mubarak realize the game?

So there is a clear role for Israel in Africa, compared to an Egyptian role that binds its parties to everything that is brown, and here the question arises about the extent of Mubarak's awareness of the catastrophe of his approach that led in Cairo to confront the crisis of the Renaissance Dam and the consequential existential threat to the country.

Previous statements by Mustafa al-Faqi - who worked as an information adviser to Mubarak - could answer this question. The man has openly attributed the Ethiopian intransigence in negotiations with Cairo to Israel providing military protection to the dam.

Al-Fiqi added that the issue of the dam for Ethiopia is not related to development, considering that the dam is primarily a malicious issue. "There are those who whisper in the ears of the Ethiopians that this pharaonic state in the northeastern corner of Africa and is always thriving throughout history, must be strangled in one way or another" .

Despite this clear vision of the presidential adviser for information, it seems that Mubarak has not paid attention to everything that is happening.

According to previous statements by Mohamed Mahmoud Mohieldin, a member of the International Tripartite Commission that was formed to study the environmental, social and economic impacts of the construction of the dam, the late Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi suggested that Egypt and Sudan participate in the construction of the Renaissance Dam with shares of 30% and 20%, respectively, of the cost of its construction, compared to Participate in his administration.

Mohieddine added that Zenawi sent a message regarding his proposal to Mubarak, and his response was, "I have nothing but war."

"We have to realize that Egypt, which exited Africa in the mid-seventies of its own free will, is not the Egypt that wants to return after 40 years to Africa, which is also not Africa today," Mohieldin added.

Economic withdrawal

For his part, the economic expert Abdel Nabi Abdel Muttalib says that Mubarak inherited from Sadat's unstable relations with Africa, explaining that the privatization of Al-Nasr Import and Export Company lost Egypt one of the most important elements of power in African relations, as the volume of trade exchange between Cairo and the countries of the continent declined.

And things in the Mubarak era were not very dark, according to the economist, but with the assassination attempt, a direct accusation was made on the air to Sudan of masterminding this attempt, and Abdul-Muttalib added, "In the meantime Mubarak started supporting Eritrea's secession, and supporting the secession of South Sudan, what It led to strained relations with Khartoum and Addis Ababa. "

The economist does not believe that Mubarak neglected Africa politically as much as it neglected economically, which made it difficult for the Ethiopians to start building the dam during his reign, and demonstrated his speech by destroying the South Sudan Liberation Movement - which was supported by Egypt - the giant digger who was digging the Jonglei Canal.