Jonathan Fenton-Harvey Sep 18, 2023
To great fanfare and some raised eyebrows, the BRICS grouping agreed to expand its membershipat its summit in South Africa last month. The decision to invite Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates as well as their traditional rival Iran to join drew particular attention. Less noticed were the longstanding tensions between two other pending members, Egypt and Ethiopia, over the latter’s Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam project, which is in the final stages of completion. In offering both countries membership, BRICS has absorbed a complex regional conflict into its midst, raising questions about the group’s potential to shape global affairs.
It didn’t take long for tensions between Addis Ababa and Cairo to resurface. On Sept. 10, just over two weeks after the summit, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced the completion of the fourth stage of filling the GERD, sparking further outrage from Cairo. Ethiopia’s unilateral move exacerbates long-standing Egyptian fears of losing access to vital Nile waters and highlights the current failures of diplomacy aimed at resolving the dispute.
Soon after both countries were invited to join BRICS at the August summit, tripartite talks about the GERD between Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan—also a downstream state—continued, suggesting renewed impetus in resolving the dispute. Yet those negotiations broke down once again, and Ethiopia’s decision to proceed with filling the $4.2 billion mega-dam has stifled hopes for improved diplomatic momentum.
Egypt has warned Ethiopia against building a dam on the Nile River since the 1970s and even threatened it with military action. But construction on the GERD began in 2011, following the Egyptian revolution, and is now nearly complete. Some further operational and construction work lies ahead, including the completion of the water-management system and the installation of more turbines to generate electricity. But the dam is expected to be fully operational by 2024.
This news is promising for Ethiopia, as the GERD offers a promising way out of its chronic energy shortage, which has historically meant that more than half of the population has had little to no access to electricity. It is also seen as a catalyst for further economic growth through potential energy exports to neighboring countries.
Yet there’s no denying that the GERD poses acute challenges for Egypt, which already faces a water deficit and could be water-scarce by 2025, according to a recent United Nations report. Drastic changes to upstream water flow could negatively affect the country’s public health and socio-economic stability, while various scientific studies, including from NASA scientists, have noted real risks to Egypt’s food production.
Having failed to achieve a diplomatic breakthrough, Cairo has focused on other projects, such as the Green River project, to mitigate its water deficits. Yet the Nile, which provides 95 percent of Egypt’s water, is irreplaceable. Traditionally called the “Gift of the Nile,” Egypt as a nation wouldn’t have existed at all if it wasn’t for the river, which also represents an important part of the country’s national identity and cultural heritage.
Egypt isn’t alone in facing risks from the potential impact of the GERD on Nile waters. Sudan also faces risks to its agricultural sector, as Sudanese farmers could suffer from any rapid water cuts, though there have been some suggestions of long-term benefits, such as regulated water flows during Sudan’s agricultural season. However, Abiy has regularly engaged with Sudanese military figures on both sides of that country’s internal conflict since it erupted in April, strengthening Ethiopia’s position and leaving Egypt more isolated.
Ethiopia and Egypt may see their new memberships in BRICS as an economic opportunity, but their inclusion without a resolution to the GERD dispute may further undermine the group’s effectiveness.
Despite some progress in talks between the two sides, key issues like water release during droughts remain unresolved ahead of a January 2024 deadline on how the dam should be operated. Perhaps the biggest obstacle to a final resolution, however, is distrust, including concerns in Cairo that Ethiopia wants unilateral control over the Nile’s flow. Earlier this year, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry warned that “all options are open” for resolving the dispute, hinting that military action remains a possibility.
Analysts are generally confident that a direct conflict is unlikely anytime soon. Yet given Egypt and Ethiopia’s inability to resolve their differences over the GERD bilaterally, external mediation is crucial. Previous efforts by the U.S. have faltered, while regional endeavors led by the African Union have not secured a breakthrough, save for facilitating further dialogue. Citing its “excellent relations” with both countries, Russia has also offered to mediate the GERD dispute in the past, while urging Ethiopia to consider Egypt’s claims. However, Moscow’s efforts have yet to yield results.
With Ethiopia and Egypt’s official membership in BRICS slated for January 2024, China’s potential role in mediating the GERD dispute warrants attention, especially given Beijing’s vested interest in ensuring the grouping’s success. Although Beijing has largely hoped to avoid becoming entangled in the conflict, it has made significant investments in Ethiopia, including in GERD-related infrastructure. These range from loans for power transmission lines connecting the dam to local communities, to direct involvement in the GERD’s construction through Chinese companies like Gezhouba Group and Voith Hydro Shanghai.
These large investments have made it harder for China to keep up its traditional non-intervention policy in African affairs, and Beijing now finds itself walking a diplomatic tightrope. While its financial commitments have boosted Ethiopia’s interests, they also provide leverage. But any overt pressure to resolve the dispute could complicate Beijing’s relationship with Addis Ababa. Beijing might also be reluctant to seek to constrain Ethiopia from doing on the Nile what China itself has been doing on the Mekong River for the past decade, to the great consternation of downstream states in Southeast Asia. Yet failure by China to use its leverage over Ethiopia may leave Egypt further marginalized and at risk of facing the consequences of water shortages, exacerbated by the impact of climate change exacerbating these dangers.
So far, pending BRICS membership has clearly not served as a catalyst for improving relations between Ethiopia and Egypt. And the potential for the dispute to create tensions within BRICS adds to further questions about the grouping’s ability to function cohesively. BRICS already had to navigate existing tensions between China and India. Despite a Chinese-brokered normalization deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran in March, the inclusion of these traditional rivals adds further complexities to the group. And even Saudi Arabia and the UAE, despite being longstanding partners in the Gulf Cooperation Council, are currently engaged in an economic rivalry to attract greater investment as they diversify their hydrocarbon-reliant economies.
Ethiopia and Egypt may see their new memberships in BRICS as an opportunity to improve their challenging economic situations, but their inclusion without a resolution to the GERD dispute may further undermine the group’s effectiveness. Ultimately, then, resolving the dispute over the Nile will most probably come down to applying legal frameworks. Indeed, Cairo has stressed the need for a fair legal treaty, and its recent accusation that Ethiopia’s filling of the GERD is “illegal” further underscores this point. Egypt had traditionally relied on British colonial-era treaties like the 1929 Nile Waters Agreement, ratified with Sudan in 1959, to claim disproportionate control over the river. With this framework arguably outdated, an updated framework could be centered around more recent rulings, such as the 1997 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Non-navigational Uses of International Watercourses, which calls for fair and equitable access to shared rivers.
There have been various proposals that could deliver equitable resource-sharing of the Nile’s waters, yet a binding legal agreement that builds upon past and future discussions will be crucial to consolidate any arrangement that grows out of them. Though it is perhaps too soon to tell how BRICS membership will affect the dispute, it is reasonable to assume that the group’s ability to shape a diplomatic outcome will remain limited. As a result, other factors, such as international law, will be key to resolving this dispute and others like it among BRICS’ current and future members.
Jonathan Fenton-Harvey is a British analyst and journalist whose work has focused largely on Gulf Cooperation Council affairs, as well as geopolitical and economic issues pertaining to the wider Middle East and Indo-Pacific. He has worked with or written for a wide range of think tanks and publications based in the U.S., the U.K. and the Middle East
