Since Ethiopia announced plans nearly a decade ago to build a massive hydroelectric dam along the Blue Nile tributary, the Egyptian government has waited in dread at the prospects that its freshwater lifeline could slow by as much as 25%.

Alternately threatening and negotiating, Egyptian officials have sought to scuttle or minimize the impact of the planned 6,450-megawatt facility. But the project has moved inexorably forward and construction, slowed by contracting corruption allegations, is nearly two-thirds complete.

With the dam now due to open next year, the specter of a military confrontation has waned and negotiators are instead debating how long the process of filling the dam should take — with Ethiopia planning to fill it in three years and Egypt asking for 15 years to better prepare for the future.

“We don’t have any other resource in Egypt except the Nile water,” warned professor Nader Nour el-Din, a soil and water expert at Cairo University. “This will harm Egypt.”

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Note: Champions Services Travel will soon announce its Egyptian April 23 to May 5, 2020 tour.