Egypt-Ethiopia Nile Dispute Expands Into a Contest for the Horn
New Ethiopian hydropower plans are drawing Somalia, Somaliland, Eritrea and Gulf states deeper into the regional balance
Ethiopia’s plans to build three additional hydropower dams on the Blue Nile have reopened one of Africa’s most persistent geopolitical disputes, less than a year after Addis Ababa formally inaugurated the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) in September 2025.
For Egypt, the issue remains one of national water security. For Ethiopia, it is tied to sovereignty, electricity generation and economic development. The latest confrontation is unfolding in a regional landscape that looks increasingly different from the one in which the GERD dispute began more than a decade ago.
The Horn of Africa has become an arena where Nile politics intersect with competition over Red Sea access, ports, military partnerships and the growing involvement of Middle Eastern powers. Egypt has strengthened relations with several of Ethiopia’s neighbors, while Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have expanded their political, economic and security footprints across Somalia, Somaliland, Sudan, Eritrea and Ethiopia.
That does not necessarily mean Cairo and Addis Ababa are moving toward direct military confrontation. The emerging pattern is one of diplomatic pressure, strategic positioning and possible proxy competition—a distinction made from different perspectives by experts in Egypt and Ethiopia.
Recent Egyptian statements have become markedly firmer. Cairo maintains that new upstream projects should not proceed without prior notification and coordination, while Ethiopian officials argue that the country has the right to develop water resources originating within its territory. Egypt depends on the Nile for nearly all its freshwater, and the Blue Nile supplies approximately 85% of the water reaching the country.
Dr. Walid Kazziha, a political scientist at the American University in Cairo, described the latest phase as serious but still largely contained within diplomatic and legal channels.
“The Egyptian reaction is … limited to making statements [and] focusing on the legal violations that the Ethiopian action may involve under international law. There are no direct military tones to the Egyptian reaction,” he told The Media Line.
Egyptian warnings sharpened during the summer. On July 13, Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty rejected reports of additional unilateral construction on the Blue Nile and said Egypt reserved “the right to legitimate self-defense in accordance with the rules of international law.”
An unnamed Egyptian government official told the state-run Middle East News Agency on Aug. 16 that Cairo had “several means at its disposal” to protect its Nile interests and would not permit any country to control the river’s flow to downstream states.
Addis Ababa views the dispute through a fundamentally different political and legal lens.
Dr. Gashaw Ayferam Endaylalu, a senior researcher specializing in Nile hydropolitics and hydropower development at Ethiopia’s Institute of Foreign Affairs, said Ethiopia considers development of the river a sovereign right and an economic necessity.
“From the Ethiopian perspective, Ethiopia has a sovereign right to utilize the water resource of the Nile,” he told The Media Line.
“Ethiopia has a legal right, a sovereign right, to utilize its water resource for development purposes,” he added. “Because Ethiopia is an agrarian-based economy, food security is the main problem for Ethiopia. Water scarcity is the main problem for Ethiopia. Energy scarcity or energy poverty is also the main problem.”
The disagreement extends beyond the technical operation of dams. It also concerns which legal and political framework should govern the river.
The Nile River Basin Cooperative Framework Agreement entered into force in October 2024 after six countries—Burundi, Ethiopia, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda—ratified it. South Sudan supplied the sixth ratification required for the treaty to take effect.
The agreement sets out principles including equitable and reasonable water use, avoidance of significant harm, data exchange and notification of planned measures. It also envisages a permanent Nile River Basin Commission. Egypt and Sudan did not ratify the agreement and are not bound by it, leaving a fundamental divide between upstream and downstream interpretations of the river’s governance.
Gashaw said Cairo’s reliance on the language of historical and existing water rights lies at the center of the disagreement.
“Those things [the claims of historical and existing water rights] are not acceptable since Ethiopia has also historical and territorial claims connected to the Nile,” he said.
For Gashaw, the Nile is “a development issue and a sovereignty issue,” rather than a matter that should be considered exclusively through a national-security framework.
The argument no longer stops at the riverbank.
Egypt’s expanding security relationships in the Horn have become part of how Addis Ababa interprets Cairo’s strategy. Egypt signed a security agreement with Somalia in 2024 and subsequently sent military aid to Mogadishu during a period of acute tension between Somalia and Ethiopia over Addis Ababa’s attempt to obtain access to the sea through Somaliland.
Turkey mediated the dispute throughout 2024, culminating in the Ankara Declaration on Dec. 11. Ethiopia and Somalia affirmed each other’s sovereignty and agreed to negotiate Ethiopian commercial access to the sea under Somali authority.
The countries restored diplomatic relations in January 2025 and opened technical negotiations the following month, although no final sea-access agreement has been announced.
Gashaw described those developments as part of an Egyptian effort to build pressure around Ethiopia.
“Diplomatic and military encirclement is one of the strategies Egypt is using to isolate Ethiopia,” he said. “Egypt is trying to create an alliance with Ethiopia’s neighbors, and Ethiopia is doing the same by diversifying partnerships as well.”
Cairo has presented its regional partnerships as serving bilateral security, Red Sea stability and Egyptian national interests. Their geography is strategically important to Ethiopia: Eritrea, Sudan, Somalia and Djibouti surround much of its route toward the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, while landlocked Addis Ababa has made access to the sea an increasingly important objective.
Egypt has also expanded military cooperation with Eritrea and secured contracts to develop Djibouti’s ports and later participate in their management, The National reported on Aug. 17.
Other countries are also shaping the strategic environment surrounding Egypt and Ethiopia.
Israel formally recognized Somaliland in December 2025, a decision sharply opposed by Somalia and Turkey. Ankara, already one of Mogadishu’s most important security partners, has expanded its presence through military cooperation, energy agreements, planned offshore drilling and preparations for a spaceport in Somalia.
Gashaw described Israel and Turkey as increasingly important competitors in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.
“Israel is also projecting power from the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean. So the main competition in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden is between Israel and Turkey,” he said.
He argued that Israel’s recognition of Somaliland was partly intended to establish a presence overlooking the Gulf of Aden.
The Horn is also being drawn into growing competition among Gulf states. Reuters reported on Feb. 14 that the Saudi-UAE rivalry, initially centered on Yemen, had spread across the Red Sea into Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Libya.
The UAE has built influence across Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti through multibillion-dollar investments, diplomatic relationships and military support. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, has increasingly aligned with Egypt, Turkey and Qatar.
These relationships do not produce a clean division into fixed blocs. Ethiopia maintains relations with competing powers, including the UAE and Turkey, while Egypt works with countries that may oppose one another elsewhere. A government may be a partner in one theater and a competitor in another.
Gashaw described Ethiopia as pursuing a “multi-vector foreign policy” based on engaging competing regional powers while avoiding membership in a formal alliance directed against Egypt.
Within that fragmented system, proxy competition appears more plausible than a conventional Egypt-Ethiopia war.
“I don’t think there will be a conventional open war between Ethiopia and Egypt for different reasons,” Gashaw said. “Instead … maybe there might be [a] proxy war or proxy competition.”
He predicted “geopolitical competition between the two countries” across Africa and said they would compete for influence over both the Red Sea and the Nile.
Despite viewing Egyptian strategy differently, Kazziha reached a similar conclusion about the immediate danger of direct conflict.
“Up to this point the issue is limited to [an] exchange of unpleasant statements, but [it] has not crossed into anything more serious,” he said.
Kazziha said Egypt may eventually seek intervention from President Donald Trump’s administration to restrain Ethiopia’s ambitions.
“Trump has in the past sent comforting signals to Sissi, but has not taken any serious steps toward mediation,” he said.
The United States has intervened before. During President Trump’s first administration, Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan held negotiations in Washington with the US Treasury and World Bank over the filling and operation of the GERD. The talks produced a draft agreement that Egypt initialed in 2020, but Ethiopia did not sign it.
Kazziha described the current confrontation as “a war of words” that could invite American intervention before it becomes more serious.
Gashaw said the competing interests surrounding the river make a decisive turn toward either sustained confrontation or lasting cooperation unlikely.
“So, I don’t think conflict will dominate cooperation, even [as] I don’t think cooperation will dominate conflict,” he said. “Rather, conflict, competition, and cooperation will coexist in the Nile River Basin.”