⁍ Sudan and Egypt both fear the $4 billion hydroelectric dam could lead to water shortages in their own countries.

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⁍ The Blue Nile is a tributary of the Nile, from which Egypt’s 100 million people get 90% of their fresh water.

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⁍ Almost a decade of tortuous negotiations have failed to yield an agreement to regulate how Ethiopia will fill the reservoir and operate the dam.

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– Egypt and Sudan aren’t happy with Ethiopia’s progress on its Blue Nile dam—and they’re not happy with Ethiopia’s plan to fill the reservoir without consulting the other countries. Egypt’s Irrigation Ministry says the “unilateral filling” of the dam, which is scheduled to be completed in 2020, “cast a shadow on the meeting and raised many questions about the feasibility of the current course of negotiations and reaching a fair agreement,” per Reuters. Sudan’s Irrigation Ministry adds the move is “a harmful and disturbing precedent in the course of cooperation between the countries concerned.” The dam is being built on the Blue Nile, a tributary of the Nile River, which provides 90% of Egypt’s fresh water. Egypt and Sudan are worried the dam, which Ethiopia says it needs to generate electricity, could lead to water shortages in their own countries. Nearly a decade of negotiations have failed to yield an agreement to regulate how Ethiopia will fill the reservoir and operate the dam while protecting Egypt’s scarce water supplies. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is being built about 9 miles from the border with Sudan on the Blue Nile, which provides the bulk of the water in the Nile after it meets the White Nile in Sudan. Last week, Ethiopia, which says it needs the dam to generate electricity for its people, said it had already achieved its first-year target for filling the reservoir, thanks to a heavy rainy season. Egypt and Sudan expressed concerns about the ‘unilateral filling.’, which they said “cast a shadow on the meeting and raised many questions about the feasibility of the current course of negotiations.”