[LINK] "Egyptian-Ethiopian disputes stall Renaissance Dam"

[rfmcdonald]

Al Monitor's Walaa Hussein looks at continuing tensions between Egypt and Ethiopia over the latter country's plans to dam the Nile.

Persisting differences among Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan keep delaying the studies, which Egypt hopes will prove that the dam's construction will cause extensive problems for Egypt and Sudan. The differences revolve around details in the fine print of the offers submitted by the two consultant offices chosen to conduct the studies: the French BRL and the Dutch Deltares. The seventh round of negotiations ended July 22 in Khartoum without any signed contracts, however.

Alaa Yassin, spokesman for an Egyptian delegation of experts on the Renaissance Dam, said in an interview with Al-Monitor, “Our official position is that this dam is harmful to Egypt, and its storage capacity has no technical or economic justification. The differences remain unresolved, and a great deal of time has been consumed. We were supposed to finish the studies in no more than six months, but around a year has passed without signing the contract related to the consultants that will conduct the studies.”

[. . .]

From September 2014 until March 2015, the three countries managed only to select the two consultant offices, but never signed any official contract with them. Members of the experts committee cannot agree on the proposals submitted. The resulting delay prompted political leaders in the three countries — Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Sudanese President Omar Bashir and Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn — to sign an agreement in March 2015 in which principles were defined in the hope of resolving their differences.

The disagreements also revolve around the office’s country of origin, as there was a Sudanese-Egyptian desire to exclude any consultancy from the United States. While Ethiopia proposed to select BRL, Egypt was leaning toward Deltares. Even after agreeing to hire both French and Dutch consultants, disputes over the division of tasks between the two intensified. While Ethiopia insisted that the French company be the main contractor and the Dutch the subcontractor, Egypt did not agree and insisted that the Dutch office take part in the process, with specific tasks.