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Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan have reached an initial deal on the filling and operation of what will be Africa's biggest hydro-electric dam: the Grand Renaissance Dam. SIWI’s Mats Eriksson explained the context and consequences in an interview with BBC.
One of our Transboundary Water Cooperation experts, Mats Eriksson, spoke to the BBC yesterday outlining the issues needing to be addressed during the ongoing negotiations as well as highlighting the need for long-term contingency with regards to the increasingly unpredictable impact of climate change.
He explains that any infrastructural undertaking on this scale would have both positive and negative effects and it is a case of mitigating as much possible the impact of those consequences in the planning stages. For example, the downstream countries: Egypt and Sudan, will be impacted during the construction of the dam during which segments of the Nile will be drained. Then there is the case of filling these segments again, with Egypt expressing concern that if it filled too fast their water supply will be affected.