Over the past couple of weeks, US President Donald Trump has made unsolicited offers to mediate talks between Ethiopia and Egypt over GERD, pulling the dam and the long-standing dispute between Addis Ababa and Cairo further into a rapidly evolving scene of complex geopolitics and transactional diplomacy in the region.
The Trump administration’s antics, which include a new Board of Peace whose seats are up for sale and plans to rebuild Gaza, are only part of the most recent developments. Confrontation between Saudi Arabia and the UAE, Israel’s recognition of Somaliland, and tensions with Eritrea also factor in.
Analysts offer their advice on how Ethiopia should look to maneuver its way past this diplomatic tightrope, and warn about the risks of remaining passive.
Fifteen years after construction first broke ground and barely five months on from its inauguration, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) has come once again into the international spotlight amidst increasingly erratic global geopolitics.
On Wednesday, US President Donald Trump met with his Egyptian counterpart, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, where he carried on with the inflammatory rhetoric of his first term in office, during which he suggested that Egypt could “blow up the dam.”
This week, Trump pledged much to the Egyptian president regarding Cairo’s opposition to the dam—a dispute Trump said was “just about settled” before he lost in a “rigged election” in 2020.
“But here I am, back. We’ll get it settled,” he said in Davos. “This is a pretty tough situation. A dam was built and the water doesn’t come down to the Nile. When I think of Egypt, I think of the Nile, but I think of the Nile with water in it.”
In characteristic fashion, Trump has announced his intention to act as a mediator in the dispute between Addis Ababa and Cairo. A week before Davos, he addressed a letter to El-Sisi, copied to the PM of Saudi Arabia, president of the UAE, Sudan’s Al-Burhan, and President Taye Atskeselassie, in which he outlined his plans for US-led talks.
The reporter