Maximizing the strategic reserves of water, knocking on the doors of global diplomacy, and developing relations with Sudan and African countries;
Through these three axes, Egypt is treading to face the third filling of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, scheduled for next August.
These three main axes, according to monitoring of official estimates and others by experts, fall within what can be called a plan to contain and reduce the negative effects of the third filling, but it does not reach to prevent these potential effects.
According to the experts, the axes include 5 Egyptian positions and movements, including a return to negotiations, and an informal bet on Addis Ababa's inability to commit to full filling, as happened in the second filling of a decline in the amount of previously announced storage capacity.
The dam, which is currently 88% complete, according to Ethiopia's ambassador to Russia, Alemayehu Tegenu, aims to store 74 billion cubic meters, of which it was able to absorb 4.5 billion cubic meters in the first filling in July 2020.
The second filling, after a year, attracted 13.5 billion cubic meters, according to official Ethiopian estimates, compared to unofficial Egyptian technical estimates, that it did not exceed 3.5 billion cubic meters because the dam's construction was not completed, while waiting for a third filling, officially estimated at 10.5 billion cubic meters.
For about 11 years, Egypt and Sudan have feared the impact of the dam on their water share (55.5 billion cubic meters and 18.5 billion cubic meters, respectively), but Ethiopia links the construction of the dam with its need for electricity, and confirms that there is no harm from it to the two countries and refuses to sign a legal agreement. Fill and run.
3 axes of the containment plan
On May 27, the director of the Renaissance Dam project, Kifle Horo, said that the third filling will be in the coming August and September, stressing the impossibility of stopping the filling technically, and denying the possibility of the dam collapse.
While the Sudanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs rejected this announcement, Cairo ignored for about two weeks the response, and simultaneously reiterated the importance of concluding a legal agreement on filling and operating the dam, during meetings of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi with European and African officials.
In a television interview on June 13, Sisi recorded the first Egyptian response to the public, revealing his country's adoption of 3 axes for a diplomatic, technical and political confrontation.
Experts concerned with African and international affairs, dam and water engineering, translate these three axes into 5 potential practical positions and moves during the coming period.
positions and movements
The Egyptian academic specializing in African affairs, Khairy Omar, says that the goal of these positions and potential moves is not to prevent mobilization but to reduce its effects and push for a binding agreement.
He believes that Egypt may accept a return to negotiations, coinciding with Addis Ababa's announcement on June 10 of its interest in resuming negotiations that have been frozen for nearly a year.
On the other hand, Mohamed Hafez, an Egyptian academic specializing in dam engineering, explained that as long as the negotiation does not depend on a rough methodology, there is no change in its course, which may witness a proposal for the scenario of selling water, describing it as a dangerous matter.
According to the Egyptian academic, the second possible move is an escalation in the movements and contacts of the Egyptian president and his foreign minister, Sameh Shoukry, on the Arab and international levels, to secure strong support for Cairo's position and put pressure on Ethiopia.
For his part, the academic specialist in international affairs, Nabil Mikhael, expected Egypt to seek American support as part of its moves to mobilize broader international and regional support.
Mikhail touches on a third position that Cairo will take to strengthen Africa's presence through concrete steps, including starting to build a Tanzanian dam in 2018, expecting a greater Egyptian-Sudanese consensus that will strengthen their position, and try to persuade the international community to guarantee their water interests.
Remarkably, in recent years, Egypt has tended to deepen relations with Africa, most notably the implementation of the Tanzanian dam, the inauguration of projects related to rain, power and water generation, and the expansion of the coverage of a new satellite launched on June 8, to include the countries of South Africa and the Nile Basin.
Maximizing the water reserve
The Egyptian academic specializing in African affairs, Khairy Omar, sees a fourth important position that Egypt will continue to pursue, which is maximizing a strategic water reserve, with projects to rehabilitate canals, water treatment and others.
Egypt has formally drawn up a plan for the year 2037 with investments of up to $100 billion to establish projects that maximize water resources, including the transition to modern irrigation and treatment systems, and it has periodic meetings to discuss the quantities of water reaching the High Dam Lake from the Nile River, the latest of which took place on the seventh of this month.
In this regard, Mohamed Hafez denounced the loading of the state budget with huge additional financial items for water treatment instead of a radical solution to the dam crisis, pointing out that Egypt may face lean years with Ethiopia seizing 10.5 billion cubic meters of water, which will lead to a shortage in future flows.
The possibility of recourse to the Security Council
Academic specialist in international affairs, Nabil Mikhael, believes that recourse to the Security Council is available to Egypt and is not excluded this time.
However, Khairy Omar suggested that Egypt would not go to the Security Council, because the council was satisfied on two occasions by inviting the parties concerned with the Renaissance Dam crisis to negotiate.
Omar is betting that the dam from a technical point of view will not bear the continuation of the quantities of filling, calling for preparations for the possibility of its collapse, a scenario that an Egyptian study warned against in late 2021.
Mikhail is also betting on internal instability in Ethiopia that may affect the dam project, and considers that Ethiopia may not be able to manage a giant dam, neither structurally nor technically, which will be in the interest of Egypt.
Abbas Sharaki, a professor of water resources at Cairo University and one of the most prominent defenders of Egypt’s position, said, based on satellite images, that there are technical problems still facing the Renaissance Dam, as the second electricity generation turbine has not yet worked, and the first works with low efficiency, As he put it.
The most prominent Egyptian moves in the first and second fillings were the communication of the dam issue to the Security Council with political contacts and technical negotiations that were frozen for about a year.