CAIRO – 15 July 2020: Ethiopia’s Minister of Water and Irrigation announced, Wednesday, the start of filling the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) according to Sky news.
The announcement comes shortly after announcing that the negotiations on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) between Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia did not achieve any progress or an agreement.
Egypt’s Minister of Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said Monday that the negotiations on GERD between Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia will continue as per the African Union vision; however, the parties still did not reach an agreement.
in press statements that the current negotiations did not achieve any progress or an agreement with the Ethiopian part.
Shoukry added that a report shall be submitted to the African Union, then a meeting between the presidents of the three countries shall be held to realize an agreement.
The Sudanese government said Tuesday that his country submitted a report on the GERD to the African Union after the end of the negotiations between the ministers of irrigation of Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopian.
The report mentioned that not much progress was achieved during the negotiations that lasted 11 days.
The Egyptian member of the negotiating committee, Alaa El Zawahry, said that the Egyptian report will include the number of meetings, whether they were bilateral or tripartite, led by prime ministers, and the exchanged opinions on technical and legal issues.
El Zawahry added in press statements that Egypt and Sudan agreed in several points, while the points of agreement between Ethiopia and Sudan were very limited.
El Zawahry said that the report will also include the Egyptian compromises made to realize a final agreement, which were met by Ethiopian intransigence.
The United Nations Security Council gave two weeks to the African Union to realize an agreement between the three countries on GERD.
On Monday, Ethiopia’s Foreign Minister Gedu Andargachew denied, reports circulated by local media claims the country started already filling Grand Renaissance Dam, GERD since July 8.
In statements to al- ain news website Andargachew affirmed that his government never announced such a thing, stressing that he will question all media outlets that circulate these rumors.
Andargachew added that his country is still committed to the negotiations headed by the African Union.
Over the past week, technical and legal committees from the three countries held two separate meetings, in an attempt to reconcile viewpoints over the dam's points of disagreement on both tracks.
The African Union-sponsored negotiations are attended by observers from the U.S. and the EU. During the technical committee's meeting, Egypt tabled some alternative formulations concerning dealing with periods of prolonged drought, as well as the rules for the annual operation and refilling of the giant hydroelectric dam.
Constructions in the Grand Renaissance Dam started on April 2, 2011 at a cost of $4.8 billion. It was built by the Italian construction and engineering company Salini Impergilo. The Italian company is headquartered in Milan. The dam is located on the Blue Nile with a capacity of 74 billion cubic meters, and is expected to generate up to 6,000 megawatts of power
Since May 2011, Cairo has voiced its concern over how the dam can reduce the country’s annual shares of 55.5 billion cubic meters of Nile water. Egypt’s average water per-capita is expected to drop from 663 cubic meters per year to 582 cubic meters by 2025, according to the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) in 2014.
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