French President Emmanuel Macron invited Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to the G7 summit in Évian to talk about Gaza, Red Sea maritime security, and the economic consequences of continued regional unrest. Sisi delivered on that brief, positioning Egypt as the indispensable Arab interlocutor, ceasefire architect, and Iran talks participant. The rewards were immediate, with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney both crediting Sisi’s regional role.
Then Sisi sat down with President Donald Trump, and the agenda shifted to the Nile. Gaza credits, Iran congratulations, and Red Sea mediation were exchanged, in a single bilateral, for an American commitment to side with Egypt against Ethiopia’s Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). Trump obliged. He declared the dam was causing “tremendous problems for Egypt,” said Ethiopia had treated Egypt “very unfairly,” and pledged to give the dispute priority. Sisi left Évian with Western endorsement.
[Trump] declared the dam was causing “tremendous problems for Egypt,” said Ethiopia had treated Egypt “very unfairly,” and pledged to give the dispute priority.
Three months before Évian, Ethiopia announced three new upstream dams on the Blue Nile, each priced at $3.5 billion, designed to come online simultaneously within seven years. They will add 5,700 megawatts of generating capacity to a river system Ethiopia already controls as its upstream sovereign. When that cascade is complete, Ethiopia will exercise greater control over Blue Nile flows than any downstream state in history. In January 2026, Trump wrote to Sisi, pledging American mediation. Ethiopia did not publicly respond; instead, it announced three dams.
Ethiopia’s position has since hardened further. On June 1, 2026, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s Prosperity Party won 438 of 486 parliamentary seats, a supermajority cementing another five-year term. The new parliament will convene in October to formally re-elect him. The election is inseparable from the dam. The government framed construction as a testament to national resilience and used the project to solidify legitimacy. No independent polls on Ethiopian attitudes exist, since the political space for dissent is closed, but the financing record functions as one: Ninety-one percent of construction costs came from Ethiopian state and citizen sources. Abiy has no political reason now to offer Cairo concessions.
The geometry extends beyond the bilateral. Kenya, the only African country invited to the leaders’ summit, also attended Évian, and Nairobi has more at stake in Ethiopia’s dam program than Cairo. Kenya is the largest customer of Ethiopian hydropower. A 25-year power purchase agreement signed in 2022 supplies 200 megawatts through the Ethiopia-Kenya interconnector, with capacity to scale to 2,000 megawatts. In the 2024–25 fiscal year, Kenya accounted for $86.3 million of Ethiopia’s $118.1 million in regional electricity exports, 73 percent of the total. Kenyan President William Ruto was the chief guest at the dam’s inauguration in September 2025, where he praised it as “a bold affirmation of Africa’s capacity to shape its own destiny.”
Egypt’s dependency on the Nile is genuine. The country relies on the river for 98 percent of its freshwater, and Sisi’s alarm is sincere.
The three upstream dams will feed the same grid. Every megawatt Ethiopia adds is a Kenyan industrial input—hydropower at $0.05 per kilowatt-hour against Kenya’s domestic tariffs of $0.18 to $0.23. No Ruto-Sisi bilateral was held at Évian. There was nothing to discuss. Cairo went to the G7 to slow the infrastructure, while Nairobi went to the G7 to buy more of it.
Egypt’s dependency on the Nile is genuine. The country relies on the river for 98 percent of its freshwater, and Sisi’s alarm is sincere. During his first term, Trump backed an Egypt-favorable framework that Addis Ababa rejected, then suggested that Egypt had the right to blow up the dam. Such a position structurally tilted every subsequent American mediation attempt toward Cairo. When Trump declares that Ethiopia treated Egypt unfairly, he is not mediating. He is confirming to Addis Ababa, and now to Nairobi, that Washington is Cairo’s patron.
Washington’s error is structural. It keeps treating this as a negotiation problem when it is a physical one. GERD exists. The cascade is coming. Abiy has won a supermajority on a platform that includes three more dams. Kenya is buying the power. The question is no longer whether Ethiopia will build but whether Egypt can adapt. Trump’s G7 pledge encourages Sisi but simply delays the inevitable.
