Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam - En plattform för regionalt samarbete?

Sammanfattning: The Nile basin is the world’s longest river and stretches from the countries of Rwanda and Burundi in the south to the Mediterranean Sea in the north. Its water flows between eleven different countries and creates a natural bond in the region. Sharing water has however created political tension in the region. Even if the states are now seeking collaborative agreements, the region is still being influenced by previous water agreements that previously gave Egypt and Sudan rights to most of the Nile River. Ethiopia has strongly advocated for their right to use the water from the basin and, as of early 2011, publically announced their plans of creating Africa’s biggest dam: the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. The dam is still in the construction phase but has already garnered reactions from Egypt and Sudan who immediately expressed concerns of the dam negatively affecting the flow of water downstream. In this paper, I investigate the impact that the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is having on regional collaboration. I shed particular light on dialog between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan and explore whether construction of the dam has had a positive impact on regional cooperation. Results show that the dam has created platforms for dialog yet that the full outcome remains dependent on findings by a designated research committee.