Egypt Rejects Ethiopia's Plan for Additional Nile Dams, Vows to Defend Water Rights

Egypt has formally rejected Ethiopia's reported plans to construct additional dams on the Nile River, warning it will not permit any party to unilaterally control water flows to downstream nations. An Egyptian official source cited by Anadolu Agency said Cairo views the Ethiopian approach as a violation of international law governing shared watercourses, and reiterated that Egypt's water security is a matter of national survival that admits no compromise.

The rejection follows years of tension between Cairo and Addis Ababa over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), the $4.8 billion hydroelectric project on the Blue Nile that Ethiopia completed filling in 2025 despite the absence of a binding agreement with Egypt and Sudan. Cairo has long argued that Ethiopia's unilateral approach to the GERD, built without a comprehensive deal on filling and operation rules, set a dangerous precedent that Addis Ababa now appears ready to repeat with further dam construction.

Egypt depends on the Nile for more than 90 percent of its freshwater needs, supplying a population of over 105 million people as well as its agricultural sector. Successive Egyptian governments have insisted that any new upstream projects must be negotiated through binding, trilateral agreements with Sudan, rather than pursued unilaterally by Addis Ababa.

The dispute carries wider significance for the Gulf, where Qatar and other regional states have consistently backed dialogue-based resolution of the Nile basin dispute, wary of any precedent that could see water resources leveraged as a unilateral tool of state power. Cairo's latest statement signals it intends to escalate its diplomatic pushback, framing continued Ethiopian dam-building as a direct threat to regional stability rather than a purely bilateral technical matter.