Sameh Shoukry meets Ethiopia’s PM

CAIRO - 26 December 2017: Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn and Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry stressed on Tuesday their countries’ achievements regarding concerns to preserve trust and cooperation between the two countries in recent years.

This was during the meeting held on Tuesday on the sidelines of the visit paid by Shoukry to Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa.

During the meeting, Shoukry and Desalegn discussed the bilateral relations and the negotiations regarding the Renaissance Dam and prepared for Ethiopian prime minister’s visit to Egypt in January.

In his visit to Addis Ababa, Shoukry also met with his counterpart, Workneh Gebeyehuto, to resume negotiations regarding the Renaissance Dam project.

“On November 12, the last meeting of the Tripartite National Committee on the Renaissance Dam (TNCRD), which was hosted in Cairo, concluded without reaching an agreement regarding the guidelines suggested by a study on the dam’s potential effects on the Nile Basin states,” according to Minister of Irrigation and Water Resources Mohamed Abdel Ati.

Abdel Ati issued a statement shortly after the meeting explaining that despite Egypt’s agreement with the study’s guidelines, the other two parties of the TNCRD did not express consensus and called for amendments.

A report based on the study presents guidelines by which Ethiopia can fill its reservoir without harming the water flow into Egypt and Sudan. The $4 billion dam is being constructed 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 share of more than 56 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). However, Addis Ababa claimed that the dam is necessary for Ethiopia’s development and will not harm downstream countries.