China's African Water Scramble

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Daniel Nisman: China's African Water Scramble

Ethiopia Dams To Make Nation A 'Power Hub'

In order to achieve its long term goal of regional energy supplier to countries like Djibouti, Kenya, Sudan, and Yemen, Ethiopia initiated its 25-year Master Plan, building hydroelectric dams along the nation's vast waterways in 12 river basins. Five of the six proposed dam projects are with Chinese firms, while the sixth is a lone Ethiopian government project. It is clear that China has recognized the imminent rise of Ethiopia and has set its sights on bolstering a country historically known for its resistance to Western colonization (Save for a brief six-year Italian occupation). As Ethiopia has no allegiance to colonial-era treaties, it will take no issue with disregarding previously forged pacts between Egypt or its former colonizer Britain, and allow for a patron in that of China to secure its future role as regional hegemon.

Controlling the Nile's resources is a zero-sum game, and this reality is startlingly clear to the Egyptians, who could be faced with a crippling water shortage just two years after Ethiopia's completion of the GERD project in 2015. Symbolically and practically, the Nile is Egypt's beating heart, giving meaning to Cairo's legacy as "Um al-Dunya" (Mother of the World), while providing the life source for the nearly 80-million people who live along its banks. But those Tom Clancy fans searching for an African water war shouldn't expect one between Egypt and Ethiopia any time soon, despite the war-mongering missives revealed by Wikileaks in 2012.

During the Mubarak era, Egypt was no doubt in a position to take bold actions like that of sabotaging Ethiopian dam construction, and likely with acquiescence of the West and neighboring Sudan. But in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, Egypt has found itself scrambling for some semblance of stability, with its economy in dire need of IMF life support and its security forces struggling to cope with a mounting Sinai Peninsula insurgency and an influx of smuggling from all directions. The rise of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood placed U.S. aid under increasing scrutiny, while recent anti-American riots have put relations between the two countries at their lowest point since the Camp David accords.

With the floodwaters of conflict over the GERD project poised to come to a head before 2015, China's stealthy ascendancy to the position of African kingmaker has already become strikingly clear. President Morsi made Beijing the destination of his first trip outside of the Middle East in August 2012, despite the dangerous implications of China's meddling in the Nile River Basin. As relations with the West recede along with Egypt's economic stability, Mr. Morsi has little choice but to engage China before a confrontation with an increasingly powerful and unrepentant Ethiopia becomes inevitable. As Anwar Sadat famously noted after signing a peace agreement with Israel in 1979: "The only matter that could take Egypt to war again is water."