“The [Egyptian] economy is in an extremely fragile state, damaged by years of borrowing and the effects of the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine,” said Mirette F Mabrouk, a Middle East Institute senior fellow and founding director of the institute’s Egypt studies programme. “Inflation has soared to its highest-ever level. There is a hard currency shortage, and the budget has already seen cuts to social spending.”
Continued warfare in Sudan may undermine Khartoum’s ability to help Cairo negotiate with Addis Ababa.
“While Sudan and Egypt do not have entirely the same concerns about the dam, there had been enough of an overlap to ensure that they both presented a fairly unified front in the negotiations,” Mabrouk said. “The war upends any guarantees about that unified front.”