ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — South Sudan’s ambassador to Ethiopia is dismissing reports that relations are strained between the two countries after President Salva Kiir visited Egypt and met with President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi in Cairo earlier this month.
South Sudan’s Ambassador to Ethiopia and the African Union, James Pitia Morgan, made the remarks after some Ethiopian and South Sudanese media outlets reported that South Sudan and Egypt signed what they called a “dirty deal” to arm Ethiopian opposition groups based in South Sudan who aim to sabotage the big dam that Ethiopia is building on the Nile River.
Egypt has long felt that the massive dam Ethiopia is currently building will decrease its share of Nile waters, despite Ethiopia’s assurances that it won’t. This raised tensions between the two countries and the Ethiopian Prime Minister recently charged that “some elements within the Egyptian government” are supporting the unrest in his country.
Despite the tensions between Ethiopia and Egypt, South Sudan wants to have good relations with both, said Morgan.
Tewolde Mulugeta, spokesman for the Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, agreed with the ambassador’s remarks saying that South Sudan and Ethiopia enjoy good relations.
Ethiopia currently hosts close to 300,000 South Sudanese refugees, most of whom fled after conflict broke out in the world’s newest nation in December 2013, according to U.N estimates.
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Egypt’s Sisi and South Sudan’s Kiir strike ‘dirty deal’
The New Arab Egypt’s Sisi and South Sudan’s Kiir strike ‘dirty deal’
Kiir thanked Sisi and announced the implementation of a peace deal [Anadolu]
As Egypt continues to court Nile Basin countries, President Sisi met with South Sudan’s leader in Cairo amid ongoing fears about the future of a controversial Ethiopian dam project.
South Sudanese President Salva Kiir has met with his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Cairo to discuss strengthening ties between the two African nations.
Kiir thanked the Egyptian president on Tuesday for backing his government and said a peace deal signed to end his country’s civil war was alive and being implemented, Egyptian state media reported.
Kiir said he had rejected attempts by unnamed parties to renegotiate the August 2015 deal, adding that he and his number two – First Vice-President Taban Deng Gai – were working “very closely” together.
“We are implementing the agreement,” he said.
Taban in July replaced exiled opposition leader Riek Machar, who maintains that the deal has collapsed.
The visit comes weeks after Sisi visited Uganda to met meet with President Yoweri Museveni – a close ally of Kiir.
An unnamed source close to Machar’s rebel group told South Sudanese media that the meeting with Sisi was part of efforts to strike a “dirty deal”.
“There is a dirty deal going between Kiir and Sisi. The issue of Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is one of the main deals being finalised in Cairo,” the source said.
He added that Egypt is keen to have South Sudan and Uganda as allies so that it can “advance its covert sabotage campaign against the Ethiopian Dam”.
Ethiopia is building the GERD hydropower dam on the Nile, close to its source in the Ethiopian highlands. It has raised fears in Egypt, which depends on controlling the flow of the Nile for its agriculture, industry and domestic water supplies.
Saudi Arabian officials recently visited the controversial dam in Ethiopia, dealing a fresh blow to already strained tensions between Cairo and Riyadh.
Sisi has also met with his Eritrean counterpart Isaias Afwerki in Cairo in a discussion that was described as a “deliberate move” against Ethiopia, political sources told The New Arab at the time.
CAIRO (Reuters) – Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi denied on Thursday Ethiopian accusations that his country was supporting the opposition after a wave of violent protests that left hundreds dead.
Ethiopia accused “elements” in Eritrea, Egypt and elsewhere on Monday of being behind protests over land grabs and human rights that prompted the government to declare a state of emergency.
The unrest has cast a shadow over Ethiopia, where a state-led industrial drive has created one of Africa’s fastest-growing economies, but whose government also faces criticism at home and abroad over its authoritarian approach.
Ethiopia’s government spokesman said Egypt, which is embroiled in a row with Addis Ababa over sharing Nile waters, was a source of backing for armed gangs though that backing may not come from state actors.
Sisi denied those accusations.
“Egypt does not conspire against anyone,” he said in a speech to the military.
“I want to assure the brothers in Ethiopia that Egypt has never ever offered any support to the opposition and will not carry out any conspiratorial action against Ethiopia.”
The construction of Ethiopia’s 6,000-megawatt Grand Renaissance Dam has become a bone of contention between Ethiopia and Egypt, which lies downstream and relies on the Nile River for agricultural, industrial and domestic water use.
(Reporting by Ali Abdelatti, Writing Lin Noueihed; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
CAIRO — The Egyptian government is determined to build a new capital in the desert 28 miles southeast of this iconic city — and it’s no longer a mirage now that China is bankrolling most of the $45 billion project.
Work has already begun on a 270-square-mile tract of army-owned land that would house as many as 5 million people when completed in 2021. PresidentAbdel Fattah al-Sisi, who is pushing the project, has his skeptics, who wonder how cash-strapped Egypt can afford such an ambitious development.
Enter the Chinese. On Sunday, China Fortune Land Development announced it would invest $20 billion in the still-unnamed capital. That comes on top of a $15 billion agreement by China’s state-owned construction company to finance 14 government buildings, a zone for trade fairs and a 5,000-seat conference center that would be the largest in Africa.
This week, the Egyptian government also announced it was speaking with the Chinese about building a university in the new city. China’s role is the latest example of using its new-found wealth to expand its influence in global affairs.
The move was prompted by the chaos and congestion of this ancient city of nearly 30 million people, a third of Egypt’s population.
“I can say with total honesty that this project is 20 years overdue,” said Mohsen Salah El Din, chief executive of the state-owned Arab Contractors, which is involved in the project.
“We had to find an alternative location to suck this congestion out of Cairo and relocate where the government would be and where the civil servants working in these agencies would live so that they don’t have to commute long distances between home and work,” he said.
Supporters of the move say Egypt is following a proven model: Turkey, India and Brazil all moved their capitals in the 20th century.
“Egypt’s administrative capital is not different from Ankara, New Delhi or Brasilia,” said Zeyad Elkelani, a political science professor at Cairo University. He said the new city would help the president reduce unemployment and streamline the country’s massive bureaucracy — an estimated 7 million public workers.
Many government workers won’t want to leave Cairo and move to the new capital, Elkelani said. Their families pass down their Cairo apartments from generation to generation. And there is no culture of commuting on a highway to work in the country. The result will be a welcome attrition in government employment.
“The new capital is an important step to make room for the private sector,” Elkelani said. “The bureaucracy has been choking business in Egypt and the residents of Cairo.”
Several hundred apartment buildings already have gone up in the new city, and construction crews are building roads and laying sewage lines.
In a sign of how determined the government is to move, the Interior Ministry announced it would phase out operations by July 2017 at the Mogamma building, where 30,000 state employees handle everything from new business registrations to issuing passports. The ministry plans to convert the landmark building into a hotel.
Mogamma dominates downtown’s Tahrir Square, where anti-government demonstrations in 2011 led to the ouster of longtime President Hosni Mubarak.
“Nobody likes coming here,” said Razan Bishara, a biology student who recently accompanied a visiting French friend to the building to renew her tourist visa. “But at least I can take the Metro to Tahrir Square. I don’t know how we are going to get bureaucratic stuff like this done when they move this place to the middle of the desert.”
Khaled Abbas, an assistant minister at the Ministry of Housing, said his agency will be the first to move. “And we’ve already designated the area for a new presidential palace and a nearby presidential district with 25,000 housing units in the works there,” he said.
Still to be determined: what to name the new city.
Officials now refer to it as the “New Administrative Capital,” but that doesn’t generate excitement for an audacious plan that will include green areas comparable to New York’s Central Park, soaring skyscrapers rivaling Dubai’s unique towers, an airport bigger than London’s Heathrow and an amusement park that outdoes Disneyland.
“The name is an issue,” Abbas said. “We are working on branding now.”
If anyone thinks the project is diverting needed funds to improve Cairo’s crumbling infrastructure and other pressing needs, they aren’t saying so publicly for fear of retribution from a military-run government that ousted Egypt’s first democratically elected president in 2013 after renewed popular unrest.
Nezar Al Sayyad, an Egyptian-born professor of architecture at the University of California-Berkeley who is now a U.S. citizen, was detained briefly last year at Cairo International Airport and questioned about humorous jabs he made on his Facebook page about the new city.
“The whole thing reflects the top-down thinking of the government,” Al Sayyad said. “It is a military-style operation on land that is owned and being sold by the army.”
“I called the new city Sisi-land,” Al Sayyad said, “and that upset them.”
Reuters- Dam has become a bone of contention between Ethiopia and Egypt, downstream from the dam and relying almost exclusively on the Nile for agricultural, industrial and domestic water use
KHARTOUM, Sept 20 (Reuters) – Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia commissioned studies into the environmental and economic impact of a $4 billion dam on the Nile that Addis Ababa aims to make the centrepiece of its bid to become Africa’s biggest power exporter.
The 6,000-megawatt Grand Renaissance Dam, situated close to Ethiopia’s border with Sudan and being built by Italy’s largest construction firm Salini Impregilo SpA, is due for completion next year.
It has become a bone of contention between Ethiopia and Egypt, downstream from the dam and relying almost exclusively on the Nile for agricultural, industrial and domestic water use.
Addis Ababa has complained Cairo has pressured international donors and lenders to withhold funding for the project, while Egypt has sought assurances the dam will not significantly cut the flow of water to its rapidly growing population.
Egyptian state news agency MENA said the two countries plus Sudan signed contracts on Tuesday tasking two French firms, BRL and Artelia, with conducting studies into the dam’s impact.
Gilles Rocquelain, BRL Director General, said the studies would start in late 2016 and take 11 months.
The leaders of the three countries signed a co-operation deal in Khartoum last year to pave the way for a joint approach to regional water supplies.
In all, Ethiopia plans to spend some $12 billion on harnessing its rivers for hydro power production in the next two decades.
(Reporting by Khaled Abdelaziz; Additional reporting by Omar Fahmy in Cairo; Writing by Asma Alsharif; Editing by John Stonestreet)
File Photo: A general view shows construction activity on the Grand Renaissance dam in Guba Woreda, Benishangul Gumuz region in this March 16, 2014 (Photo: Reuters)
Egypt’s irrigation and water resources minister announced on Sunday the postponing of contract signing with two foreign consultancy firms – to study the impact of Ethiopia’s Grand Renaissance Dam on downriver countries – due to “unresolved issues.”
In statements to the state-owned MENA news agency, ministry spokesman Waleed Haqiqi said that the delay was due to “outstanding issues between the consultancy firms conducting the technical studies and the legal firm wording the contracts.”
Haqiqi added that another reason behind the postponing was that the firms’ experts were not granted entry visas to Sudan.
The signing of the contracts between the two French firms – BRL and Artelia – and Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan was to take place on 5-6 September in Sudan’s Khartoum, according to Egypt’s foreign ministry.
The spokesman added that Egypt was currently coordinating with the consultancy firms and the Sudanese and Ethiopian sides to agree on a new date for the meetings.
The announcement by Egypt comes a few days after media reports quoted an unnamed Ethiopian source as saying that no date was set for the signing of the contracts as announced by Egypt’s foreign ministry.
However, last week an official Egyptian source told Al-Ahram newspaper said that they were officially invited by Ethiopia to the meeting on 5-6 September and have not received any notice of a postponement, quelling the media reports.
Cairo has repeatedly expressed concerns that Ethiopia’s $4.2 billion dam could affect its historical share of Nile water, or, according to Prime Minister Sherif Ismail, that the hydroelectric dam could be used for reasons other than electricity generation.
Addis Ababa insists that the nearly complete dam project will not affect downstream countries negatively.
Daily News Egypt Foreign Ministry says statements attributed to Ethiopian minister over GERD were inaccurate Ethiopia committed to the declaration of principles signed with Egypt and Sudan, says the ministry Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam The Foreign Ministry issued a statement Read More ...
Ahram Online Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia agreed on Tuesday on a new French firm which will study the impact of the controversial dam on water shares for Nile basin countries Egypt’s irrigation minister said the Khartoum agreement that was reached on Tuesday between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia on the Grand Renaissance Dam prevents the latter
