Egypt’s Ministry of Irrigation on Saturday said that the government has signed a cooperation protocol with South Sudan’s Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation that includes a project to prepare feasibility studies for the construction of the multipurpose Wau Dam in South Sudan, reported the Egypt Independent.
The news is in line with Egypt’s plan to implement several projects to achieve stability by solving drinking water problems and protecting against flood risks.
The project is located on the Siwi River, one of the main branches of the Al-Jur River in the Bahr al-Ghazal Basin, at a distance of nine kilometers, south of Wau in southern Sudan. It aims to generate 10.40 megawatts of electricity, in addition to providing drinking water to about 500,000 people.
The ministry prepared the integrated technical and economic studies for the project with the assistance of the National Water Research Center’s experts to prepare hydrological and hydraulic studies, survey work, and contour maps of the site.
Joseph Mom, South Sudan’s ambassador to Egypt, confirmed that South Sudanese Vice President James Wani Iga will visit Egypt in July, at the head of a high-level delegation that includes a large number of ministers in the Government of South Sudan, to hold meetings of the committee shared between the two countries.
He said that the committee will discuss ways to activate the memoranda of understanding and cooperation that were signed between the various ministries in the two countries.
Meanwhile, Sameh Shoukry, Egypt’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, said that the Ethiopian allegations that Egypt and Sudan are working to internationalize the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) issue outside the framework of the African Union (AU) were an attempt to evade and disavow any international mechanisms that would contribute to solving the dam issue.
Shoukry has called Ethiopia’s recent statements against Egypt and Sudan in the ongoing Nile dam crisis as provocative. He added that Egypt is aware of its rights and how to defend them.
“We always seek peaceful means, and we resort to international bodies and mechanisms,” Shourky stressed.
