African Union Calls for Meeting over Renaissance Dam

Today, the Presidency of the African Union called on Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia to meet next Sunday about the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) according to an official in Addis Ababa.

This came according to statements by Ethiopian Foreign Ministry spokesman Dina Mufti, at his ministry's weekly press conference.

Mufti explained that South Africa, which presides over the African Union, called the three countries concerned to a meeting to discuss the latest situation about the dam.

Mufti pointed out that this meeting will be the first after negotiations were suspended for a full month, because of Khartoum’s demand to change the negotiation methodology.

The spokesman said that the upcoming meeting that South Africa called for, is considered as "Running against time", referring to the transfer of the next presidency of the African Union in 2021 to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Last Saturday, the presidency renewed in a statement the importance of reaching a binding legal agreement on the rules for filling and operating the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, with negotiations stalled between the three countries over the project, which the downstream countries fear would affect water quotas and damage their dams.

The statement said that Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi received a phone call from his South African counterpart, Cyril Ramaphosa, whose country presides over the current session of the African bloc, which is leading the final stages of negotiations.

Sisi stressed "Egypt's position on the inevitability of crystallizing a binding legal agreement that includes the three countries and preserves Egypt's water rights by defining the rules for filling the dam, due to the existential issue that the Nile waters represent for Egypt and its people."

In the middle of this month, the Sudanese government announced an agreement with Ethiopia to resume negotiations on the dam, after Khartoum boycotted the negotiation sessions due to what it considered relying on an "old approach" that would not work, and called for a greater role for experts to contribute to resolving the crisis between Cairo, Addis Ababa and Khartoum.