WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Friday that he was ready to restart U.S. mediation efforts between Egypt and Ethiopia with an eye toward resolving long-standing issues of water sharing from the Nile River.
Washington-led mediations began during Trump’s first term, but they effectively collapsed in 2020, when Ethiopia withdrew — though some discussions later continued under the African Union.
Ethiopia formally inaugurated the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, or GERD, last fall. As Africa’s largest dam, it is located on the Blue Nile near Ethiopia’s border with Sudan and is meant to produce more than 5,000 megawatts, doubling Ethiopia’s electricity generation capacity.
Ethiopia sees the dam as a boon to its economy. But Egypt opposed its construction, arguing that it would reduce the country’s share of Nile River waters — which it almost entirely relies on for agriculture and to serve its more than 100 million people.
On Sept. 4, before the dam’s inauguration, Tamim Khallaf, spokesperson for the Egyptian foreign ministry, said Ethiopia built the dam “unilaterally without any prior notification, proper consultations, or consensus with downstream countries, thereby constituting a grave violation of international law and posing an existential threat.”
Trump posted on his social media site a letter he sent to Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, saying: “I am ready to restart U.S. mediation between Egypt and Ethiopia to responsibly resolve the question of ‘The Nile Water Sharing’ once and for all.”
“My team and I understand the significance of the Nile River to Egypt and its people,” Trump wrote.
The president frequently boasts about ending eight wars around the world, though that claim is exaggerated. Egypt and Ethiopia are already on his list of wars he resolved, with Trump maintaining he stopped a conflict that might have led to fighting over issues that included the dam known as GERD.
Trump recently told Fox News that one of the ongoing conflicts that has continued despite his claiming to have stopped it — between Thailand and Cambodia — should actually count more than once.
“I did put out eight wars, eight and a quarter, because, you know, Thailand and Cambodia started going at it again,” he told Sean Hannity last week. The implication was a flare-up in the conflict made it an extra 1/4 of a war — something to watch for as he pushes mediation efforts again in Ethiopia and Egypt.
