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Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s office defended Ethiopia’s Great Renaissance Dam, which will become Africa’s largest hydroelectric plant, and said Ethiopia was working to resolve long-standing problems over the project with Sudan’s downstream neighbors and Egypt.
FILE: Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed Ali. Image: AFP
ADDIS ABABA – Ethiopia vowed on Saturday not to “give in to aggression of any kind” after US President Donald Trump lashed out at the mega-dam on the Nile River and suggested Egypt could destroy it.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s office defended Ethiopia’s Great Renaissance Dam, which will become Africa’s largest hydroelectric plant, and said Ethiopia was working to resolve long-standing problems over the project with Sudan’s downstream neighbors and Egypt.
“However, occasional statements of belligerent threats that Ethiopia succumb to unfair terms still abound. These threats and affronts to Ethiopian sovereignty are misguided, unproductive and clear violations of international law,” his office said in a statement.
“Ethiopia will not give in to attacks of any kind,” the statement added.
A separate version of the statement issued in Amharic featured more muscular language.
“There are two facts that the world has certified. The first is that there has been no one who has lived in peace after provoking Ethiopia. The second is that if Ethiopians stick together for a purpose, it is inevitable, they will triumph,” he said. . .
Abiy’s office did not explicitly mention Trump, but his statement came the morning after the US president intervened in the dam dispute in support of Egypt.
“It is a very dangerous situation because Egypt will not be able to live that way,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office Friday during a ceremony marking a breakthrough in the normalization agreement between Israel and Sudan.
“They’ll end up blowing up the dam. And I said it and I’m saying it loud and clear: they’ll blow up that dam. And they have to do something,” Trump said.
Egypt depends on the Nile for about 97% of its irrigation and drinking water and sees the dam as an existential threat.
Ethiopia, for its part, considers the dam essential for its electrification and development.
Washington’s attempt to negotiate a deal to solve the dam problem ended in failure earlier this year after Ethiopia accused the Trump administration of favoring Egypt.
Negotiations between Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan are now being overseen by the African Union.
The United States announced last month that it would suspend a portion of its financial aid to Ethiopia, citing a lack of progress in the talks and Ethiopia’s “unilateral decision” to begin filling the dam reservoir.
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