Ethiopia and Egypt: The First Modern Water War?
A dam on the Nile threatens Egypt's way of life, meanwhile a rogue state auctions off crucial access to the sea.
Written by Ben Kwasnik
Water. The world’s most valuable commodity is often overlooked in geopolitics, but with overpopulation and climate change, it could soon be the focal point of conflicts globally. Perhaps the first such conflict will be between Egypt and Ethiopia. A major point of tension between the two countries has been Ethiopia’s construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), which promises to be Africa’s largest hydroelectric plant. The GERD sits along one of the Nile’s tributary rivers, from which Africa’s largest river gets 85% of its water.
The Nile is crucial to Egypt, and has been for the last 5,000 years - it was the lifeblood of the world’s oldest civilisation, and approximately 95% of Egypt’s population reside within twenty miles of it. Put simply, Egypt cannot exist without the Nile, and any threat to limit the supply of its water represents an existential threat to the cradle of civilisation.
Ethiopia themselves are also prisoners of their geography and also crave water for their own reasons. The Nile is a great source of energy and is an enormous contributor towards Ethiopia’s agriculture, which will become increasingly necessary given Ethiopia’s population is projected to triple from 120 million to 300 million over the next 80 years, and an increased probability of drought.
Aside from the Nile, Ethiopia being a landlocked country has long desired access to the sea, which it lost following Eritrea’s secession from Ethiopia in 1991. While currently, the vast majority of Ethiopia’s trade goes through neighbouring Djibouti’s Tadjoura port, President Abiy Ahmed Ali has made it a priority of his government to secure access to the sea. In January 2024 Ethiopia signed a Memorandum of Understanding with neighbouring Somaliland - currently the world’s largest unrecognised self-governing territory - that it would recognise them in exchange for access to a port. Somalia were enraged, considering it a violation of its territorial integrity, and a hostile act of aggression.
Tensions escalated between Egypt, Ethiopia and Somalia in August, as Egypt announced a military partnership with Somalia. The details of the agreement were ambiguous, but the crux of it was that Ethiopian troops which are stationed in Somalia, in an African Union mission to fight Al-Shabab terrorists, would be replaced by Egyptian troops. In one fell swoop, Ethiopia’s troops were removed from fighting terrorism, leading to an increased probability of terrorist attacks in Ethiopian territory, as well as allowing for the Egyptian army to be stationed on Ethiopia’s border. This prompted fear and anger in Ethiopia, with President Abiy stating “Anyone intending to invade Ethiopia should think not just once, but 10 times, because one great thing we Ethiopians know is [how] to defend ourselves”.
The escalation of tensions between Ethiopia and the emerging Egypt-Somalia alliance is yet another flashpoint in an already unstable region. With the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis occurring in neighbouring Sudan’s brutal civil war, Ethiopia and Eritrea only signing a peace treaty for their decades long war in 2022, and active Islamist extremist groups increasing in number, disputes are often resolved with bullets rather than at the ballot box.
To make matters worse, Ethiopia is deeply divided internally. Historically known as Abyssinia (coming from the Amharic word for ‘mixture’), Ethiopia is home to over eighty different ethnicities, which have repeatedly come into conflict with one another. President Abiy’s 2018 election brought to an end years of Tigrayan domination of politics, and Abiy, who is Oromo, brought his Oromo entourage to dominate the corridors of power. As recently as late 2021 an ethnic conflict between the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front and the Ethiopian government approached the Ethiopian capital - Addis Ababa - and was only suppressed by enlisting ethnic Amharic militias against the Tigrayans. The Tigrayan rebellion was suppressed, but in solving one problem Abiy created another, with ethnic violence spreading to the Amhara region. One of the militias that Abiy armed was the Fano militia, who did not down their arms after defeating the Tigrayans, but rather continued fighting, now against the Oromo-dominated Ethiopian government over historical claims to lands controlled by Tigrayans. The rebellion is currently growing, and crimes against humanity are being carried out on both sides, as ethnic violence shows no sign of dissipating in Ethiopia.
The GERD project for Ethiopia represents not just a crucial project in terms of energy production, but also symbolically. The dam, once fully operational, could double Ethiopia’s electricity output, of which it currently suffers a huge shortage - a truly transformational feat given that only half of the country’s population has access to electricity. In addition, the dam was funded largely by Ethiopians themselves, who bought into the project using donations and low-denominatino bonds, giving the dam a feeling of collective ownership. Indeed, the Economist labelled the dam “perhaps the only issue that unites [Ethiopians] of all ethnicities .Similarly, access to the sea would restore to Ethiopia what it lost following Eritrea’s succession from Ethiopia in 1991, and alongside political and economic advantages, it would symbolically represent the restoration of Ethiopian power and prestige, lending the state greater support and legitimacy.
The stakes for the outcome of both disputes over water could not be much higher, for most parties involved. For Egypt, a country which is 95% desert, and whose population is set to grow from around 105 million to 160 million by 2050, any reduction in the volume of the Nile is a mortal wound. Egypt is already facing enough problems as it is - it is experiencing a deep recession, was forced to take a $35bn bailout from the UAE, and has the world’s two largest humanitarian crises happening on two of its borders.
For Somalia, a country with a fraught history with its neighbour - as witnessed in their 1977 invasion of Ethiopia, and Ethiopia’s 2006-09 invasion of Somalia - the chance to weaken Ethiopia and maintain its sovereignty over Somaliland is a delectable prospect. Similarly, Eritrea has no love lost for its bigger neighbour, which was accused of committing genocide against it in the thirty years long civil war. Whereas a weakened Ethiopia would provide Eritrea with some respite, and nullify the chance of a conflict between the two, a stronger Ethiopia with sea access would be an existential threat to them, both militarily and at sea.
A full-scale war appears unlikely, for the moment, which is mainly due to logistical reasons. Egypt is simply too far away from Ethiopia to launch a conventional assault, and it would be unlikely that Somalia would allow Egypt to station enough troops on its territory to launch a full scale invasion. What would appear more likely, however, is a proxy, or multiple proxy conflicts breaking out. The region currently resembles a tinderbox, which could explode at a moment’s notice. Somalia and Somaliland remain in a frozen civil war, but 2023 saw an uptick in fighting between Somaliland and proxy forces supported by Somalia in Las Anod, and a refugee crisis, alongside a famine. With Egypt siding with Somalia and Ethiopia siding with Somaliland, this conflict has a high probability of escalating, and serving as a battle for influence within the region. In addition, the ongoing ethnic tensions in Ethiopia could be exacerbated with foreign support for rebel groups. Along the Eritrean-Ethiopian border, arms could cross easily to support Tigrayan rebels; as could happen along the Somalian-Ethiopian border with ethnic Somalians in Ethiopia.
The results of any conflict would be devastating - in a region where famines are commonplace and poverty is sky-high, a widespread conflict would cause immeasurable suffering and a large migrant crisis. Given the region’s volatility, it would be surprising if this dispute didn’t escalate into, at the bare minimum, proxy wars erupting between Ethiopia and Egypt. Should Ethiopia emerge from the contest with the upper hand, it will consolidate its place as a regional leader, whereas should it lose, it risks territory losses, in-fighting similar to that of Sudan, and perhaps Balkanisation. Regardless of the result, this dispute will likely hold the grim moniker of being the first, modern-era large-scale water conflict that humanity has witnessed.
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Excellent summary of this complex region.