Ethiopia has completed filling the reservoir of its huge dam on the Blue Nile river for a second year, a minister said on Monday, a move that has already angered Egypt.
Addis Ababa says the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), a $4 billion hydropower project, is crucial to its economic development and to provide power.
But the dam has been a source of dispute ever since Ethiopia broke ground on the project in 2011, with Egypt and Sudan viewing it as a threat because of their dependence on Nile waters.
Talks held under the auspices of the African Union have failed to yield a three-way agreement on the dam’s filling and operations, and Cairo and Khartoum have demanded Addis Ababa cease filling the massive reservoir until such a deal is reached.
But Ethiopian officials have argued that filling is a natural part of the dam’s construction process and cannot be stopped.
Long-running diplomatic efforts to resolve the dispute between the three countries have yielded little success.
The UN Security Council met earlier this month to discuss the project, although Ethiopia later slammed the session as an “unhelpful” distraction from the AU-led process.