Ethiopian Minister of Water and Energy Habtamu Itefa on Thursday 5 November 2026 called on Egypt to contribute to implementing Ethiopian development projects on the Nile, to support Ethiopia obtaining sea access, and to stop what he described as media campaigns against his country. He said in filmed remarks: “Egypt must contribute positively to achieving our development projects” and “Egypt must contribute to Ethiopia obtaining a sea outlet”, adding that Ethiopia’s priority after completing the Renaissance Dam has become reaching the sea by peaceful means.
Itefa said in an interview with the Ethiopian Fana Media Corporation on the same day: “We are not going to stop the water from flowing to Egypt. We believe this river is for everyone”. He criticized the High Dam and Egypt’s transfer of Nile water to Toshka and Sinai without consulting upstream countries, and rejected the agreements signed in the colonial era.
Member of the House of Representatives Mostafa Bakry described the remarks as “blackmail and an affront to Egyptian national security, and the security of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait”, and said “Egypt will not accept blackmail”. No announced official response has yet been issued by the foreign or irrigation ministries to Thursday’s remarks.
The remarks came three days after a meeting of the “2+2” mechanism of the foreign and irrigation ministers of Egypt and Sudan in Cairo on Monday 2 November, whose joint statement affirmed that Ethiopia’s management of the dam without a binding legal framework poses a continuing threat, adherence to water rights under the 1959 agreement, and that Red Sea governance is the exclusive responsibility of its littoral states. Itefa said last August that Ethiopia now controls the flows of the Nile, and announced a plan to build three new dams.
Photo: Prime Minister Office Ethiopia via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)
