Welcome to Overseas Coverage’s Africa Temporary.
The highlights this week: Ethiopia opens a controversial dam on the Nile River, South Sudan’s army seizes key cities amid battle with a rival group, and Kenya’s president hires a U.S. lobbying agency to do his bidding in Washington.
Ethiopia opened Africa’s largest hydroelectric dam on Tuesday, ending Egypt’s majority management of the Nile River. The controversial $5 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), which took 14 years to construct, goals to double Ethiopia’s energy technology and improve electrical energy entry for round 60 million Ethiopians who lack it.
Ethiopia additionally plans to promote low cost electrical energy generated by the 5,150-megawatt-capacity GERD to Kenya, Tanzania, and Djibouti, by means of which the Ethiopian authorities is aiming to create $427 million in export income this fiscal yr. Kenyan President William Ruto attended the dam’s inauguration.
However not everyone seems to be completely satisfied in regards to the GERD—particularly not Egypt, which depends on the Nile for round virtually all of its freshwater provide. Some 80 p.c of the river’s waters originate in Ethiopia, and Egypt says that the GERD threatens its water safety. Cairo beforehand floated the thought of army intervention in opposition to Ethiopia to cease its development.
In a letter to the United Nations Safety Council on Tuesday, Egypt warned that it will take motion to defend “the existential pursuits of its folks.” Egyptian Overseas Minister Badr Abdelatty wrote that “any misconceptions that Cairo would flip a blind eye” to its pursuits within the Nile are “mere delusions.”
Egypt lengthy managed nearly all of the Nile’s waters underneath a 1929 treaty between the UK and Egypt, then underneath partial British colonial rule; the treaty granted Egypt veto energy on Nile development initiatives, even these past its borders. Sudan later signed a 1959 settlement with Egypt, which elevated Egypt’s share of the Nile’s stream from about 57 p.c to about 66 p.c.
Nevertheless, upstream nations—together with Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Ethiopia—had zero share of the river’s water sources and argued that they might not be sure by colonial-era agreements that excluded them. By 2024, 5 of those international locations had signed a brand new treaty, which was rejected by Egypt and Sudan.
With the GERD, Ethiopia now exerts management over the Nile. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has framed the GERD as a problem of nationwide satisfaction. “This venture means the tip of Ethiopia’s geopolitical insignificance,” Abiy mentioned this month.
“The concept that Ethiopia ought to be capable to construct a dam by itself territory … and shouldn’t be pushed round by Egypt is broadly one thing that the majority Ethiopians would get behind,” Magnus Taylor, the deputy director of the Horn of Africa venture on the Worldwide Disaster Group, informed Reuters.
Throughout U.S. President Donald Trump’s first time period, the US decreased help to Ethiopia in an try and torpedo the GERD’s development. Egypt is a serious U.S. ally and one of many largest recipients of U.S. international help and army help. Nevertheless, Ethiopia then used in style bonds—offered to residents and the Ethiopian diaspora—to finance the dam.
Trump waded into the dispute once more in July, when he mentioned that his administration was “engaged on” resolving tensions between Egypt and Ethiopia. He mentioned in June that the dam was “stupidly” funded by the US, a declare that Addis Ababa disputes.
“Trump held grudges in opposition to Ethiopia for not adhering to his self-styled mediation efforts between Ethiopia and Egypt eight years in the past,” Fekahmed Negash, a former Ethiopian GERD negotiator, informed the Reporter Journal, an Ethiopian outlet.
Because the flip of the century, Ethiopia has relied on China for monetary help. Beijing partly financed among the infrastructure across the dam, corresponding to energy strains, by means of loans from the Export-Import Financial institution of China.
Ethiopian critics have mentioned that Egypt’s fears in regards to the dam’s impacts on water safety are overblown and that Cairo’s anger is pushed by geopolitical ambitions. Egypt’s Aswan Excessive Dam, constructed on the Nile within the Sixties, irrigates farms within the nation. Nevertheless, Egypt argues that the method of filling the GERD has already led Sudan to expertise water declines.
The dam dispute has the potential to stoke tensions all through the Horn of Africa, the place Ethiopia faces a looming battle with Eritrea over entry to the Purple Sea. In 2024, Ethiopia signed a take care of the breakaway area of Somaliland for Purple Sea port entry. That prompted Somalia, Eritrea, and Egypt to forge what they known as an “axis” of resistance in opposition to Ethiopia.
Somalia has since made peace with Ethiopia in a deal brokered by Turkey, however hostilities stay between Ethiopia and its neighbors. Final week, the Arab League launched a press release arguing for the safety of the water rights of Egypt and Sudan.
The assertion prompted a pointy response from Suleiman Dedefo, Ethiopia’s ambassador to Somalia. “What authorized or ethical floor does the ‘Arab League’ need to threaten Ethiopia on behalf of Egypt and instruct Ethiopia to use for permission to make the most of its personal sources?,” he posted on X.
Wednesday, Sept. 10: Senegal releases inflation information for August.
The Intra-African Commerce Honest concludes in Algiers, Algeria.
Thursday, Sept. 11: The U.N. Safety Council votes on extension of its sanctions and arms embargo in opposition to Sudan.
Tuesday, Sept. 16: Malawi holds presidential elections.
South Sudan energy battle. After weeks of renewed battle in South Sudan, the nation’s army mentioned on Saturday that it had taken management of no less than two cities within the northeastern state of Higher Nile from a rival military loyal to the imprisoned vp.
In March, a 2018 power-sharing association between President Salva Kiir and Vice President Riek Machar collapsed. Kiir leads the Sudan Folks’s Liberation Motion (SPLM), which spearheaded South Sudan’s 2011 independence push and is linked to the Dinka ethnic group. Machar leads the SPLM-in Opposition, or SPLM-IO, which has ties to the Nuer ethnic group.
Kiir’s authorities arrested Machar on prices of making an attempt to stir a riot. Kiir accused the SPLM-IO and its army wing of colluding with the White Military, a Nuer-armed group that Kiir’s military has been combating since February within the state of Higher Nile, which borders Sudan.
Sudan’s military, in the meantime, has mentioned that Kiir is quietly backing a brand new alliance between an offshoot of the SPLM and the Sudanese army’s rival, the paramilitary Speedy Help Forces.
Local weather finance summit. African lenders and industrial banks signed a deal to mobilize investments of as much as $100 billion in financing Africa’s inexperienced industrialization, Kenyan President William Ruto mentioned in the course of the Africa Local weather Summit in Addis Ababa this week. The establishments embrace the African Export-Import Financial institution, the African Improvement Financial institution, and Ecobank Transnational.
Africa is among the continents most affected by excessive climate occasions, accounting for 85 p.c of human publicity to wildfires globally. But it surely receives simply 2 p.c of worldwide local weather financing from lenders. A Local weather Coverage Initiative report launched in June discovered that a lot climate-related financing has disappeared from dwindling international help budgets.
Ruto’s U.S. lobbyists. Ruto’s administration has defended a transfer to signal a $175,000 per thirty days lobbying take care of a U.S. agency amid outrage from the general public and opposition events. The Kenyan authorities not too long ago signed a contract with Continental Technique, a consulting group based by Carlos Trujillo, Trump’s former ambassador to the Group of American States.
Kenya is searching for nearer ties with the US on commerce and safety following months of protest in opposition to Ruto’s administration and a violent crackdown by Kenyan safety forces. Kenyan Prime Cupboard Secretary Musalia Mudavadi mentioned that deal was a “reputable follow” to advance Nairobi’s pursuits in Washington, “the place competitors for visibility is intense.”
Kenya was a key African companion underneath former U.S. President Joe Biden however has discovered itself sidelined underneath Trump. Republican U.S. Sen. James Risch requested for a assessment of Biden’s designation of the nation as a serious non-NATO ally resulting from Kenya’s ties to China, Iran, and Russia, however the proposal was rejected by Congress.
Pre-UNGA visa restrictions. The Trump administration plans to grant a one-month sanctions waiver to Equatorial Guinea’s vp, Teodoro Nguema Obiang, permitting him to attend the Africa Power Funding Summit on the sidelines of the U.N. Common Meeting assembly in New York Metropolis this month and journey round the US freely.
Obiang is the son of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who’s Africa’s longest-serving president. The United States, France, and Switzerland have prosecuted the Obiang regime on accusations of widespread corruption and state plunder, which have left residents in poverty regardless of the nation’s huge pure sources.
The U.S. waiver choice was made to counter China’s affect in Africa, The Related Press reported. China signed a deal with Equatorial Guinea final yr that features financing of a number of infrastructure initiatives. Beijing additionally reportedly has ambitions to construct a naval base within the nation.
Elite seize in Gabon. After main a coup in Gabon in August 2023, President Brice Oligui Nguema promised the folks of Gabon a change from the outdated guard—regardless of being the cousin of ousted President Ali Bongo. Within the Republic, Bergès Mietté questions whether or not it’s attainable “to construct a brand new Gabon with those that have been carving it for many years.”
Since being democratically elected in April, Nguema has stored some loyalists from the Bongo regime who “have been in a position to reconvert, with out transition, into the Nguema regime, which they’re working to reshape and even torpedo,” Mietté writes.
Ethiopian resistance in Somerset. In New Strains Journal, Meena Venkataramanan revisits why Ethiopia’s final monarch, Haile Selassie, spent years in exile within the sleepy English metropolis of Tub, higher identified for being the onetime dwelling of writer Jane Austen.
From Tub, the place he lived between 1936 and 1940, Selassie deliberate a comeback in opposition to Italian occupation. He rallied British organizations for help, finally permitting him to defeat the military of Benito Mussolini. Selassie was instrumental to the founding of the Group of African Unity, which was finally succeeded by the African Union.
