Sudan Offers To Mediate Between Egypt, Ethiopia Over GERD Nile Dam Issue

Sudan’s Sovereign Council’s deputy head, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, on Sunday said his country would work as a mediator to bridge the gap and reach an agreement over the Nile dam, reported The Register Citizen.

Dagalo’s remarks came at the end of two-day visit to Cairo where he met Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi. Sudan sits between Egypt and Ethiopia along the Nile’s route.

According to Egyptian presidential spokesman Bassam Rady, during the meeting, the two leaders discussed the developments of the Nile dam issue in the light of the agreement reached through tripartite negotiations in Washington.

Rady said Dagalo also commended Egypt for maintaining the safety and stability of Sudan amid the historic turn it goes through.

Ethiopia opted out of the latest round of talks over the dam on Feb. 26 in Washington that was aimed at concluding a deal over the rules of filling and operating the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) that has been building since 2011. The Ethiopian government said it needed further domestic consultations before signing a deal with Egypt.

 The U.S. had drafted a deal after more than four months of talks on the filling and operation of the dam and said the final testing and filling of the dam should not take place without an agreement.

 Egypt had concerns that filling the reservoir behind the dam quickly could significantly reduce its 55.5-billion-cubic-meter annual share of Nile water. Ethiopia, an upstream Nile Basin country, on the other hand, eyes massive benefits from the dam construction.

Egypt signed the draft deal last month and also urged Ethiopia and Sudan to do the same, describing it as “fair and equitable” and in the “common interest of the three countries.”

Upon completion, the Nile dam is expected to produce over 6,000 megawatts of electricity and become Africa’s largest hydropower dam.