Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and Egyptian Agriculture

Abstract

The Nile River provides Egypt with about 72.62% of all of its water resources. The agricultural sector consumes about 81.45% of the total water resources available to Egypt. Egypt annual quota of the Nile water is fixed at 55.5 billion cubic meters. Therefore per capita share of water resources is dwindling over the years. From 1947 to 1960 there was a relative abundance of water, where per capita annual water share ranged between 2604-1893 cu-bic meters. Then Egypt reached water sufficiency during the period 1970 1986 where per capita share ranged from 1672 to 1138 cubic meters. Starting from 1996 per capita water share fell below the annual water poverty line of 1000 cubic meters. It is expected that the per capita share will reach 582 liters in year 2025. It is expected that the water cri-sis in Egypt will worsen in year 2050, when the per capita share of water reaches 294 m³. - This research attempts to study the interrelated relationships between Egypt and Ethiopia within the framework of game theory, where simple models are used to analyze the ongoing conflict and concerns about the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. The analysis indicates that there is a high degree of water stress that could lead to direct clashes be-tween the Nile Basin countries. The study however. shows that a peaceful solution to the problem can lead to increased water returns for both countries. By studying the different scenarios to fill the Renais-sance Dam reservoir, it was found that Egypt could lose about 88% and 66% of its agricultural lands re-spectively. The first scenario assumes that the res-ervoir will be filled in three years which means that Egypt would lose about 26% of its yearly quota. As for the second scenario, the reservoir will be filled in five years, which will entail a deficit rate of about 12% of the total annual Egyptian water budget. This means an annual loss of about 1.2 million acres of agricultural land in Egypt. That means that that after Egypt will lose about 6 million acres of its total agri-cultural lands over five years. Unfortunately, the first and second scenarios are strongly advocated by the Ethiopian government.