Ethiopia Should Seek Nile Water Compensation From Egypt, Former Minister Says

Shiferaw Jarso, who served as Ethiopia's water minister, is calling on his government to demand that Egypt pay for the water it uses from the Abay River—the Ethiopian name for the Nile. His argument rests on a straightforward calculation: Ethiopia supplies roughly 86 percent of the river's total flow, yet captures almost none of the economic value that downstream nations extract from it. Speaking to the state news agency, Jarso framed the demand not as a new grievance but as a correction long overdue.

Egypt has recently escalated its rhetoric against Ethiopia's plans to build additional dams on the Abay, but Jarso dismissed these threats as familiar noise. Ethiopia, he said, has always maintained that it has the right to use its own water equitably, and Egypt's objections will not alter that course. The country has long included new dam projects in its water development strategy, and these should not be treated as provocations but as routine infrastructure planning.

The distinction Jarso drew is important: most of the planned dams are designed to generate hydropower, not to consume water. When a dam produces electricity, the water passes through and continues downstream—it is not depleted. In fact, the same volume of water can generate power multiple times as it cascades from one dam to another down the river's course. This means Ethiopia's dam construction, properly understood, does not reduce the water available to Egypt. If anything, Jarso argued, Ethiopia's dams could stabilize downstream flow and reduce losses to evaporation, potentially benefiting Egypt and other nations that depend on the river.

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, or GERD, already demonstrates this principle in practice. Ethiopia continues to release water from GERD into the river system; the dam is not a plug but a regulator. Jarso emphasized that Ethiopia's goal is equitable use, not deprivation. He also noted that GERD proved Ethiopia's capacity to finance and build major projects without external permission—a point he underscored by recalling his own experience as minister, when Egypt's approval was required even for small water supply schemes in the Gambella region. That era, he said flatly, has ended.

Jarso went further, suggesting that Ethiopia's hydropower development could become a source of regional economic cooperation. If Ethiopia generates surplus electricity through its dams, it could sell power to Egypt and neighboring countries, creating mutual gain. But for that cooperation to materialize, Egypt would need to shift from obstruction to partnership. More fundamentally, Jarso argued, Egypt should recognize and compensate Ethiopia for the water resource itself—the raw material that makes all downstream benefit possible.

His reasoning reflects Ethiopia's geographic reality: the country's highland terrain means much of its water naturally flows away; Ethiopia cannot consume all of it domestically even if it wanted to. That water, which Ethiopia cannot use, becomes Egypt's gain. Under current arrangements, Ethiopia bears the cost of watershed management and dam construction while Egypt reaps the primary economic reward. Jarso's position is that this imbalance should be corrected through formal compensation or benefit-sharing agreements.

Beyond the technical water question, Jarso accused Egypt of pursuing a broader strategy to block Ethiopia's development across multiple domains. He characterized this as a decades-long pattern, particularly in the Abay Basin, and called on the international community and Ethiopians themselves to reject such obstruction. Yet he also noted that Ethiopia's diplomatic standing has strengthened in recent years and that global opinion increasingly accepts Ethiopia's case for equitable water use. His closing statement carried the weight of finality: Ethiopia will continue to develop, and no external pressure will stop it from building dams and pursuing its development agenda.