Ethiopian Prime Minister Dr. Abiy Ahmed announced last week that his country completed the fourth and final filling of its Grand Renaissance Dam, which left downstream Egypt seething since this development debunked years of its disinformation. The Nile River didn’t dry up, the Egyptian agricultural industry wasn’t affected whatsoever, and no war broke out over the project. Every single person who earlier warned of supposedly dire consequences was just discredited as a propagandist.
Egypt had hitherto invested heavily in scaring the international community into thinking that Ethiopia was supposedly plotting to hold the Nile hostage for some inexplicable reason, but the reality is that this was never anything more than an infowar narrative aimed at handicapping that country’s development. Al Jazeera and the other global media outlets that contributed to this disinformation campaign did so to curry favor with Cairo, but they now stand exposed and have nothing to show for their efforts.
The fact of the matter is that GERD was always driven solely by economic motives without any political or strategic ones in mind, which is exactly what Ethiopia always insisted. Those who groundlessly claimed that there was more to this project that Addis claimed were dishonestly misleading their audience for the reasons that were explained. Apart from the desire to curry favor with Cairo, some might also have had bigoted intentions in wanting to hold back the rise of this African nation.
Speculation about their motives aside, the point is that GERD’s final filling should be a moment of accountability and reckoning for the global media. Both Mainstream and Alternative Media have the chance to issue mea culpas in a last-ditch attempt to salvage their credibility, though few influencers are expected to do so, but those who admit they were wrong deserve to be applauded. In any case, Ethiopia’s accelerated development brought about by GERD will herald a new era for the region.
This East African leader plans to eventually export excess electricity to its neighbors and therefore speed up their development as well, which will turbocharge the Horn’s rise as a whole. These countries are geostrategically positioned astride one of the world’s top shipping routes, and it’s about time that they make the most out of it. They had hitherto been unable to tap into their full potential due to chronic underdevelopment brought about by a lack of infrastructure, but GERD is about to change that.
The region’s Ethiopian-led development will also hasten the global systemic transition to multipolarity seeing as how that core country recently joined BRICS, whose members are united in their goal of gradually reforming the world order. This also includes Egypt, which was admitted to that group alongside Ethiopia. Cairo would therefore do well to remember this and correspondingly control its criticisms of Addis going forward in order to not prompt suspicion of its motives among BRICS’ members.
The same holds true for those who previously laundered Egypt’s infowar narrative fearmongering about the consequences of GERD’s final filling. They risk also risk discrediting themselves from that group’s perspective if they cling to these debunked claims and therefore end up doing the West’s bidding, whether deliberately or inadvertently, by de facto dividing-and-ruling BRICS via this artificially manufactured wedge issue. It’ll therefore be interesting to see who sticks to this script and who doesn’t.
