The world’s longest river, a lifeline for hundreds of millions of people, is also fast becoming a fault line. Ethiopia’s ambitious $4.2 billion hydroelectric dam project on the Nile River’s main tributary is raising tensions with Egypt over how to share the essential resource, and exposing the rivalry between Cairo and an ascendant Addis Ababa for regional power. The main point of contention is Ethiopia’s plan to fill the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam’s 74-billion-cubic-meter reservoir within three years of the dam’s planned completion in 2019—a pace that downstream Egypt argues will leave water levels in its floodplain dangerously low. “Egypt cannot live without the Nile,” Mohamed Abdel-Ati, Egypt’s minister of irrigation and water resources, said last month. “Egypt understands Ethiopia’s right to development but Ethiopia has to prove, practically, that the dam won’t harm Egypt.” Down Stream Ethiopia is building a hydroelectric dam on the Nile River’s main tributary, […]