After a heated week that witnessed an escalation between Egypt and Ethiopia, an independent scientific group from both countries as well as Sudan will start meeting on Monday in Khartoum hoping to find a consensual way out of the dispute over filling and operating Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).
The scientific committee is made up of five specialized experts from the three countries.
The meeting will be crucial in discussing each country's proposals on the rules of filling and operating the dam. It will be followed by a meeting of Irrigation Ministers of the three countries on October 4 and 5 to approve the topics to be agreed upon.
The Khartoum meeting comes after the failure of the last round of negotiations, held in Cairo, which included the countries’ Irrigation Ministers. The meeting did not address the technical aspects and was limited to procedural details without discussing substantive issues.
Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan have been negotiating for nearly eight years.
Speaking at the 74th UN General Assembly, Ethiopia’s president Sahle-Work Zewde responded to Egypt’s call for international intervention in the ongoing Nile dam dispute.
The President noted that some 65 million Ethiopians do not have access to electricity, cautioning that the River Nile should not be an object of competition and mistrust, adding the dam project offered a unique opportunity for all the countries along the river to co-operate to share the waters.
In 2011, Addis Ababa announced the construction of the $4 billion dam to be the centerpiece of Ethiopia’s bid to become Africa’s biggest power exporter, generating more than 6,000 megawatts.