GERD and the Nile riparians — what the negotiations actually settled, and what they did not

<p>The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam&#x27;s fifth and final filling completed in September 2024. The dam now holds approximately 74 billion cubic metres at full reservoir, generating up to 5,150 megawatts at full turbine commissioning. The thirteen years of trilateral negotiations between Ethiopia, Egypt, and Sudan that accompanied construction produced no binding legal agreement on filling or operation. What they produced is worth examining on its own terms.</p> <p>The 2015 Declaration of Principles signed in Khartoum committed the three states to ten principles, including cooperation, equitable utilisation, no significant harm, and amicable dispute resolution. The principles were genuine commitments; they were also legally non-binding. The 2019–2020 Washington-mediated talks, hosted by the US Treasury under Steven Mnuchin&#x27;s direction, produced a draft agreement that Ethiopia ultimately refused to initial, viewing the mediation as having tilted toward Egypt&#x27;s position on multi-year drought operations.</p> <p>The African Union assumed mediation in 2020 under Cyril Ramaphosa&#x27;s chairmanship. The AU process produced detailed technical exchanges but no binding text. Subsequent rounds under the Republic of the Congo&#x27;s chairmanship continued through 2023 without resolution. The dam continued filling.</p> <p>What does this mean for the eight other Nile Basin states — Burundi, the DRC, Eritrea, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda? The 2010 Nile Basin Cooperative Framework Agreement, signed by six upstream states, has been ratified by six and entered into force in October 2024 after Burundi&#x27;s ratification. The CFA establishes a Nile Basin Commission with authority over basin-wide projects. Egypt and Sudan are not parties.</p> <p>Adem Kassie Abebe, writing on Ethiopian constitutional and treaty practice, has noted that the GERD outcome — a fait accompli with no binding legal restraint — sets a precedent that other upstream states are watching. Uganda&#x27;s Karuma Dam, Kenya&#x27;s planned High Grand Falls, Tanzania&#x27;s Stiegler&#x27;s Gorge are all infrastructure that earlier doctrines of Egyptian historic-use veto would have foreclosed. The post-GERD doctrinal landscape is that infrastructure moves faster than treaty negotiation. That may be unfortunate from a downstream-rights perspective; it is the reality the basin now operates under.</p> <p>The honest summary is that GERD resolved Ethiopia&#x27;s question — yes, we will build — without resolving the basin&#x27;s underlying question of how to allocate water under climate-driven flow variability. The next drought will be the test. The Nile Basin Initiative&#x27;s hydrological modeling capacity, built up over two decades, is what will or will not enable the riparians to manage the test cooperatively. Treaties not signed do not write themselves under stress.</p>