CAIRO, Egypt and Ethiopia agreed on adopting a joint vision on Ethiopia’s construction of Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), Egyptian presidential spokesman said Sunday.
The vision, reached by Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali, is based on each country’s respect to the development rights and interests of the other, Bassam Rady said in a statement.
The Ethiopian prime minister arrived in Cairo on Saturday for a two-day visit, his first to Egypt since assuming his post in April.
The two leaders also asserted will to push forward bilateral relations and cooperation in all aspects, in particular the political and economic ones, according to Rady.
Ethiopia has been constructing a giant dam on the Nile River that raises Egypt’s concerns as a downstream country about its annual share of the river water.
The construction of the GERD, which will be Africa’s largest dam upon completion with a total volume of 74,000 million cubic meters, has been a major issue among the two countries since its commencement in April 2011, with a construction cost of 80 billion Ethiopian birr (4.7 billion U.S. dollars).
While Ethiopia and Sudan reached a mutual consensus on the construction of the dam, Egypt frequently expressed its concern that the dam would affect its annual share of 55.5 billion cubic meters of the Nile River water amid the GERD’s rapid construction.
Source: Xinhua
