The Nile provides over 90 percent of Egypt’s water supply. Almost the entire population lives cramped in the sliver of the Nile Valley. Around 60 percent of Egypt’s Nile water originates in Ethiopia from the Blue Nile, one of two main tributaries.
Egypt hardly gets by with the water it does have. It has one of the lowest per capita shares of water in the world, some 660 cubic meters a person. The strain is worsened by inefficiency and waste. With the population expected to double in 50 years, shortages are predicted to become severe even sooner, by 2025.
Egypt already receives the lion’s share of Nile waters: more than 55 billion of the around 88 billion cubic meters of water that flow down the river each year. It is promised that amount under agreements from 1929 and 1959 that other Nile nations say are unfair and ignore the needs of their own large populations.
Complicating the situation, no one has a clear idea what impact Ethiopia’s dam will actually have. Addis Ababa insists it will not cause significant harm to Egypt or Sudan downstream.
Much depends on the management of the flow and how fast Ethiopia fills its reservoir, which can hold 74 billion cubic meters of water. A faster fill means blocking more water, while doing it slowly would mean less reduction downstream.
Once the fill is completed, the flow would in theory return to normal. Egypt, where agriculture employs a quarter of the work force, is worried that the damage could be long-lasting.
Credit : AP News
Picture Credit : Google
