Network of Ethiopian Scholars
By the Board of the Network of Ethiopian Scholars www.nesglobal.org and the director of the Adwa Great African Victory Association (AGAVA) https://nesglobal.org/adwa124/
Background
It is well known that Ethiopia is the source of the 86.5% of the water and soil that cascades to Egypt and Sudan. Although the Ottoman Turks used to pay 50,000 gold coins to Ethiopia, during their reign over Egypt, no such remuneration has been undertaken by Egypt for a long time.
Objective
The main objective of this statement is to appeal to all concerned including the Ethiopian Government to ensure that the Ethiopian people fully benefit from the natural resource with which the Almighty God has blessed Ethiopia including the Abby River as well as to motivate the Egyptian Government to utilize its own water resources as well as rendering an adequate compensation to Ethiopia for the water that it is provided with.
III: GERD Can Generate Purified Water and Electricity
The opportunity of GERD as an engineering mega project is not just for Ethiopia, but it is for all the partners in the region. The GERD reservoir can generate clean carbon diet free energy, fisheries, clean fresh water, and flood control, regulation of water vapor generating electricity and providing youth employment opportunities.
The entire weather pattern and climate can be examined systematically to make sure the water level is never reduced. There can be also solar panels that can be used to store the heat from the sun during hot seasons to retain the green zone on the ground and retain water. Solar energy can be harnessed from the heat and light from the sun to create electricity and continue to use the land to produce as many fruits and crops as possible.
The filling of the dam can be accomplished with water gain by discovering the appropriate and agreed high way to avoid water loss. We can do a genuine and serious Strength, Weakness, Opportunity and Threat analysis over time how to facilitate the possibility for water gain rather than water loss at any climate and weather changing time. It is a matter of how on the journey all can agree to share and work to achieve high quality output on both the hydroelectricity and water level sides. In Japan, they can now recycle toilet water.
The weather condition and climate can be thoroughly examined with space satellites with remote sensing communications and a variety of ground and water level experiments that are waiting to be applied. New explosive digital technology can be used to assist and to make sure the water is not only retained but also ways can be discovered to recycle the water and increase the level by regulating the flow annually. We are now in the fourth and fifth Industrial Revolution era where we can fuse biological, ecological, physical, technological and socio-political worlds through digital science, technology and innovation incubations and simulations. There is now opportunity to unify and create holistic innovation systems to bring and expand the interconnectivity between cyber, physical, ecological and socio-economic systems. GERD can benefit all by doing systematic and effective research knowing all the space, land and sea with resilience can be developed to become also increasingly interdependent and inextricably interwoven.
Consideration should be given to methodologies of saving the water being lost due to evaporation, to deal with the water flow value chain from Ethiopia to Sudan and Egypt. The Three countries can join to manage innovatively the optimal waste management to address systematically the environmental challenges that all the three countries face by applying the digital technology to create sustainable, smart and integrated regional development.
IV: Methods for Achieving Ethiopia’s Right to the Abbay River
Ethiopia should apply the following methods in order to ensure that the people fully benefit from the Abbay River:
- That Ethiopia formulates and applies a comprehensive and a strategic national socio-economic development plan in order to relieve the Ethiopian people from the desperate poverty they are suffering under by, inter alia, the utilization of the Abbay River;
According to the UNDP Human Development Index, Ethiopia is 175th out of 191 countries in the world.
Egypt’s annual GDP is US$4,655 whereas that of Ethiopia is US$1,244.
- That Egypt which receives a significant quantity of Ethiopia’s water and soil via the Abbay River be required to pay an adequate compensation to Ethiopia similar to Lesotho that obtains over US$40 million annually for its water supply to South Africa.
V: Egypt Can Utilize Its Own Water Resources
Egypt should make use of its own vast water resources including the ones listed hereunder instead of making itself totally dependent on Ethiopia:
- Its significant ground water;
- Recycling of its waste water;
- Reducing the evaporation by utilizing a more efficient agricultural system;
- Desalination of the substantial water resources available to Egypt from the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea.
VI: Need for Collaboration among the Horn of African Countries
It would be of great benefit to the countries in the Horn of Africa, namely, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia to establish a mutually supportive and peaceful system for the achievement of an accelerated development plan, unity and peace.
VII: Prospects for Collaboration Among the Countries in the Red Sea Area
There are immense prospects for huge mutual benefits in terms of peace, unity, socio-economic development, etc. if the countries in the Red Sea area, namely, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, Egypt and Sudan were to collaborate effectively including the utilization of the vast water and rich soil available on the African side as well as the rich oil and financial resources on the other side of the Red Sea.
VIII: Need to improve Ethiopia’s human settlements pattern:
It’s known that, unlike the situation in developed countries, Ethiopia’s current human settlement is 80% rural and 20% urban resulting in severely inadequate infrastructural services including education, water, health, electricity, transportation, technology, etc. It is, therefore, essential to transform Ethiopia’s human settlement with a possible support by the United Nations Center for Human Settlements.
IX: Respect Ethiopia’s Right to the Blue Nile Forever
In order to ensure that the required peace, unity, and an accelerated development, etc. is fully achieved in the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea area, it is essential that Ethiopia is accorded the respect for its right to the Abbay River. Egypt must remunerate Ethiopia for the rich water and soil that it receives from Ethiopia and utilizes its own water resources. It is also wise to achieve a mutually beneficial collaboration among the countries in the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea Region.
X: Reject All the Colonial Treaties on the Blue Nile River
Egypt and Sudan must be the first to reject the over 10 colonial treaties that the British, the French, the Italians and others imposed to deny the right of Ethiopia to the Blue Nile water. They should acknowledge that Ethiopia remaining independent even after the Berlin 1884-1885 Scramble for Africa was subjected through the treaties they imposed to do a colonial intrusion on Ethiopia. They know over 86 %of the Blue Nile water flows from Ethiopia. How can they deny Ethiopia the right to share the water by allocating all the Nile water to Egypt and Sudan to create strife and conflict which has not been resolved until today? Why must these colonial treaties continue? Why did Egypt and Sudan fail to reject the colonial treaties if they have really been on the trajectory to undertake full de-coloniality? The true proof of Egypt and Sudan becoming decolonial can be best expressed and demonstrated if they were able to reject the 1891-1959 colonial treaties imposed on the Blue Nile on Ethiopia. Egypt and Sudan must be the first to reject the 1929 and 1959 unfair colonial treaties. The two Governments must come out, and publicly reject all the colonial treaties, and appeal to all in Africa to come together and continue to learn to share and find the pathway to agree even when they disagree by re-dressing the injustice Ethiopia has suffered from the distractions to attain the completion on time the GERD.
XI: No more Invasion: Let Mutually Beneficial Relations Prevail with GERD
Egypt has historically attempted to invade Ethiopia ten times but was defeated repeatedly. Egyptian threats of war regarding GERD could result in dangerous consequences for itself.
XII: Concluding Remarks
The engineering design and model can be framed in such a way that GERD’s hydroelectricity can come with the increase rather than the decrease of the water level in the Nile River region as a whole. All the Riparian states must create Research Association of the Riparian States Collaboration (RASC) to manage systematically the Nile region by applying science, technology, engineering and innovation to understand the space, the land and the water in the Nile River region to generate hydroelectric power by increasing the water level rather than reducing it.
The engineering to store the water is not difficult. What is very damaging being the unnecessary politics that the politicians and media play. The politicians, the extremists and media preferred to promote ethnic political division openly to hurt and divide Ethiopia rather than learning to agree on how best both electricity and water can be shared. What cost is involved and how best to agree to share the needed cost? South Africa pays annually to Lesotho for the water that flows to them. All agreements must be based on scientific research output. All should join to undertake evidence-based research to make sure that conspiracy and other conflicts are stopped finally and surely. Scientific hydrological knowledge must prevail. Politics and media must be controlled. Acknowledgement of Ethiopia’s sovereign right over the Blue Nile is nothing else but justice finally attained.
By the Board of the Network of Ethiopian Scholars and the director of the Adwa Great African Victory Association (AGAVA) https://nesglobal.org/adwa124/
