Al Jazeera English published this video item, entitled “Can Ethiopia and Egypt agree on the Nile? | The Stream” – below is their description.
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Ethiopia says a multibillion dollar hydroelectric dam on the Blue Nile will change the lives of 65 million people without electricity and mark the country’s arrival as a major African power. But the project threatens a lasting rift between Nile basin countries downstream – especially Egypt.
Egypt fears that rapidly filling the Ethiopian dam will arrest the flow of water downstream, where Egyptian farmers already struggling with the impact of climate change rely on irrigation from the Nile. Recent talks between Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan led by the African Union have so failed to yield an agreement.
Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed says Addis Ababa has “no intention” of harming Egypt and neighbouring Sudan by running the new dam. But Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al Sisi recently told the UN General Assembly that “the Nile River must not be monopolised by one state”.
In this episode of The Stream, we look at what the GERD means for people living in the Nile basin and whether Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan can find common ground.
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About This Source - Al Jazeera English
The video item below is a piece of English language content from Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera is a Qatari state-funded broadcaster based in Doha, Qatar, owned by the Al Jazeera Media Network.
Blue Nile, also known as Abbay is a river originating at Lake Tana in Ethiopia. It is the major tributary of the Nile Basin Watershed and is also referred to as the “Blue Nile” once it is in the territory of Sudan. With the White Nile, it is one of the two major tributaries of the Nile.
Climate is the long-term average of weather, typically averaged over a period of 30 years. More rigorously, it is the mean and variability of meteorological variables over a time spanning from months to millions of years.
Climate Change is the name commonly given to the notion that the Earth is undergoing a changing climate as a result of human activity, including notable leaders, scientists and naturalists including Sir David Attenborough.
Climate change includes both the global warming driven by human emissions of greenhouse gases, and the resulting large-scale shifts in weather patterns.
Egypt, a country linking northeast Africa with the Middle East, dates to the time of the pharaohs. Millennia-old monuments sit along the fertile Nile River Valley, including Giza’s colossal Pyramids and Great Sphinx as well as Luxor’s hieroglyph-lined Karnak Temple and Valley of the Kings tombs.
The capital, Cairo, is home to Ottoman landmarks like Muhammad Ali Mosque and the Egyptian Museum, a trove of antiquities.
Ethiopia, in the Horn of Africa, is a rugged, landlocked country split by the Great Rift Valley. With archaeological finds dating back more than 3 million years, it’s a place of ancient culture. Among its important sites are Lalibela with its rock-cut Christian churches from the 12th–13th centuries. Aksum is the ruins of an ancient city with obelisks, tombs, castles and Our Lady Mary of Zion church.
The Nile is a major north-flowing river in northeastern Africa, and is the longest river in Africa. The Nile is about 6,650 km (4,130 mi) long and its drainage basin covers eleven countries: Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, South Sudan, Republic of the Sudan, and Egypt. In particular, the Nile is the primary water source of Egypt and Sudan.
The Nile has two major tributaries – the White Nile and the Blue Nile. The White Nile is considered to be the headwaters and primary stream of the Nile itself. The Blue Nile, however, is the source of most of the water, containing 80% of the water and silt. The White Nile is longer and rises in the Great Lakes region of central Africa, with the most distant source still undetermined but located in either Rwanda or Burundi. It flows north through Tanzania, Lake Victoria, Uganda and South Sudan. The Blue Nile begins at Lake Tana in Ethiopia and flows into Sudan from the southeast. The two rivers meet just north of the Sudanese capital of Khartoum.
The northern section of the river flows north almost entirely through the Sudanese desert to Egypt, then ends in a large delta and flows into the Mediterranean Sea. Egyptian civilization and Sudanese kingdoms have depended on the river since ancient times. Most of the population and cities of Egypt lie along those parts of the Nile valley north of Aswan, and nearly all the cultural and historical sites of Ancient Egypt are found along river banks.
The Sudan, officially the Republic of the Sudan, is a country in Northeast Africa. It is bordered by Egypt to the north, Libya to the northwest, Chad to the west, the Central African Republic to the southwest, South Sudan to the south, Ethiopia to the southeast, Eritrea to the east, and the Red Sea to the northeast.
Sudan’s history goes back to the Pharaonic period. Independence from the British was proclaimed on 1 January 1956.
Islam was Sudan’s state religion and Islamic laws applied from 1983 until 2020 when the country became a secular state. The economy has been described as lower-middle income and relies on oil production. Sudan is a member of the United Nations, the Arab League, African Union, COMESA, Non-Aligned Movement and the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation.
