"For the one who breaks her back.
For he that walks in the dark. And those swimming among the shark.
The GERD is not a dream, but a reality on track."

That’s how Billene Seyoum, Press Secretary for the Office of the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, described the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) in her recent 'Ethiopia speaks' poem. The long-standing dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia – and Sudan to some extent – over sharing the Nile river is nothing new. Still, the filling of the reservoir has put it once again under the limelight. One decade after the dam construction started and after years of negotiations and renegotiations, the GERD remains a source of regional acrimony. While, for Ethiopia’s political elites, the GERD is a matter of development and "national pride" ¹ – as reflected in the 2012 billboard with former PM Zenawi –, for Egyptian leadership, it is a "matter of life and existence" ².

Such contrasting perceptions are not restricted to the Nile basin. The construction of the Rogun dam in the Vakhsh river – a tributary of the Amu Darya river – has also drawn diverging opinions. For Tajik President Rahmon, the dam represented the "bright future" of Tajikistan ³. For the former Uzbek President Karimov, projects such as the Rogun dam "suffered from megalomania" and had the potential to lead to "not just serious confrontation, but even wars" ⁴. The shift in this seemingly never-ending standoff between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan came after President Karimov’s death and the rise to power of Mirziyoyev, who now viewed the dam as a way to "solve water and energy problems" ⁵.