See on Scoop.it – Geography Education
While construction of Africa’s largest hydroelectric dam continues apace, downstream neighbour Egypt is crying foul. Egypt’s main concern is water security, as the country faces a future of increasing scarcity. Nearly all of Egypt’s water comes from the Nile, and its population of 83 million is growing at nearly two percent annually.”
85% of the Nile’s water comes from the Blue Nile that originates in the Ethiopian highlands–it is the Blue Nile that Ethiopia has been working on damming since 2011. The Grand Ethiopia Renaissance Dam (GERD) will be located ocated near the border with Sudan (see in Google Maps). As stated in this BBC article (with a nice 1-minute video clip), Egypt and Sudan currently get the majority of the Nile’s waters because of outdated colonial-era treaties that ignored upstream riparian states. This explains why Egypt is adamantly opposed to Ethiopia’s plan and is actively lobbying the international community to stop construction on the dam, fearing their water supply with be threatened. Oil might be the most economically valuable liquid resource in North Africa, but water is the most critical for human habitation.
Tags: Ethiopia, Africa, development. environment, water, energy, borders, political.
See on www.aljazeera.com
GEOGRAPHY EDUCATION 
April 23, 2014 at 3:12 am
(For those who don’t know the idea of this dam the study started long ago, half a century ago)
Whether they escalate or not Ethiopia will not see another famine to its children while God Gave her this resource. It was a grave sin in the past to loose populations due to famine mainly because Egypt was working day and night to block the fund for harnessing our resource at the time and it will not happen again in Ethiopia. We are building it by ourselves. Better for Egypt at list not to deposit another sin for the future.
April 23, 2014 at 3:13 am
*least