Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia on Saturday are set to review a draft agreement regarding the filling and operating of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), while technical committees continue their work in the coming days. According to sources involved with Nile water concerns, the technical committees will start discussions on Saturday with the aim of merging the proposals of the three countries into a single draft, then formulated into an agreement to be presented to the AU. They added that construction, which will continue from September to August 2021, will be crucial in completing the construction of the dam by 2023. The Ethiopian Foreign Minister Gedu Andargachew said that a great rapprochement has been reached thanks to negotiations with Egypt and Sudan. Ethiopia, on the other hand, has stressed the importance of the project to bolstering its economy, where more than half of the population currently lives without access to electricity.

Source: Ethiopian News August 22, 2020 10:07 UTC