Ethiopia’s highly contested and controversial Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) was officially inaugurated on September 9, 2025, marking the completion of one of Africa’s most ambitious infrastructure projects. The event opened a new chapter in the decades-long tensions between Ethiopia and the downstream riparian states of Egypt and Sudan. Water scarcity in the Nile basin can be either physical, resulting from a lack of available water, or economic, arising from insufficient financial resources to utilize existing supplies. While Egypt and Sudan are physically water-scarce countries, facing declining per capita ... (full story)