CAIRO: Egypt has no objections to any dam in Ethiopia and supports its development, but wants a fair deal on filling and operating it, the Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation Mohamed Abdel-Ati said on Thursday.
Ethiopia is pinning its hopes of economic development and power generation on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), but Egypt fears it will threaten its water supply from the Nile. Sudan is concerned about the dam’s safety and its own water flow.
Abdel-Ati said Egypt supported the development of the Nile Basin nations and Africa “with actions, not words.”
He highlighted the country’s contribution to building the Jebel Al-Awliya reservoir in Sudan, the Wau Dam in South Sudan, the Owen reservoir in Uganda, and the Rufinji dam in Tanzania.
Egypt had also helped to build the navigation line project linking Lake Victoria to the Mediterranean and turned the Nile into a corridor for development in the Nile Basin countries in a way that benefited everyone and contributed to achieving integration, he added.
Egypt sought to achieve cooperation with a fair and binding legal agreement to fill and operate the GERD with everyone’s interests at heart, he added.
He also said Egypt wished to see stability in Ethiopia and the rest of the Nile Basin countries and that bilateral cooperation and the development of the Nile Basin countries and African countries was one of Egypt's strengths, in light of its human capabilities and diverse technical and institutional expertise in the field of water resources.
He said that, through this cooperation, many development projects were being implemented that directly benefited the citizens of those countries.
It contributed to achieving sustainable development and raising the standard of living to help address the challenges facing the African continent such as population increase, poverty spread, illiteracy and diseases, he said.
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