Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi and his counterpart of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) Felix Tshisekedi on Thursday discussed over the phone the disputed Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). Sisi also affirmed Egypt’s support for the Sudanese proposal to form an international quartet under the chairmanship of the African Union to mediate the GERD talks. The phone talks came a few hours after Sisi held talks with Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok in Cairo, where they agreed to intensify coordination over the issue of the GERD. Ethiopia, an upstream Nile basin country, started building the GERD in 2011, while Egypt is concerned that the dam might affect its 55.5-billion-cubic-meter annual share of the Nile water. Ethiopia carried out the first phase of filling the dam in July 2020 and is expected to start the second phase later this year.

Source: Ethiopian News March 12, 2021 15:23 UTC