FILE - Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam DesalegnCAIRO – 5 January 2018: Amid the current tense relations between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan regarding the Renaissance Dam negotiations, Israel decided to increase its investments in Addis Ababa in the energy field to reach $500 million.According to the state-owned Ethiopian news agency ENA on Friday, Israeli company Giga-watt Global announced that they are interested in investing about $500 million in Ethiopia in renewable energy and human resource development inside the country.Giga-watt Global CEO, Josef I. Abramowitz, announced that he met with Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn alongside other Israeli companies to discuss the project’s details. He explained that the reason behind this expansion is to strengthen its influence in the region.He feared that Israel might use these influences later to affect Egypt’s interests including supporting the dam’s construction and the whole state’s share from the Nile.This, however, was not the first move inside Africa that raised Egypt’s doubts regarding influencing its interests in the region.Last December, a tripartite meeting between Turkish, Sudanese and Qatari army chiefs took place in Khartoum. This meeting came on the sidelines of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s visit to Sudan, in which he received the responsibility of managing Suakin Island for an undetermined period of time.Several Gulf media outlets questioned the intentions of the meeting and its timing. Egypt’s average water per capita is expected to drop from 663 cubic meters per year to 582 cubic meters by 2025, according to the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS). However, Addis Ababa claimed that the dam is necessary for Ethiopia’s development and will not harm downstream countries.

Source: Egypt Today January 05, 2018 19:07 UTC