The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam - in cartoons
July 31, 2020
Cartoons are mostly meant to illustrate and comment on the news you already know, but sometimes they inform you about a subject you did not hear about. We follow multiple sources of international news every day, but somehow we missed recent news about the Renaissance Dam until cartoonists from the MENA region stared sharing cartoons about it.
The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (Gerd), which has been in construction since 2011, is now filling up with water. Egypt is opposed to any development on the Nile upstream that could reduce the amount of water it receives from the river and has regarded the Ethiopian project as an existential threat.
The first cartoon that spiked our interest was this one by Emad Hajjaj, who portrays the dam a powerful geopolitical tool of force in the hands of Ethiopia:
Other cartoons take a similar stance, warning that the dam will give Ethiopia the power to control the amount of water flowing up the Nile, like this one by Derkaoui:
And in the end, it will be the common people that suffer, like farmers in Egypt that will suffer from a lack of water, illustrated here by Ahmad Rahma:
While most of probably visit our platform to see satire about the news you already know, do take the time to check out the cartoons you don't immediately understand, because you might learn about issues you did not know about.
Let's wait and see what the future hide
Posted by: على ابراهيم المصري | September 20, 2020 at 08:57 PM
I observed the cartoons with smiling face and examined the messages of the three renderings. I wrote a long article on the Dam and concerning the arts, I find them perceptive and depictive of political views. The first art tells the true story. Egypt built the dam (hard to believe but true) and as the art shows, Ethiopia demolishes it. Ethiopian discovered too late to do that - destroy the dam that was not exactly the place for the dam that the Ethiopians would have constructed. The second art shows the perception of the Egyptians. Ethiopian has no need or capability to divert the mighty river flow to make a U-turn before it leaves the Ethiopian boundary. If Ethiopia builds such a dam to retain Abay River water, most of the country would be under water in about ten years. The third art is also another perception of Egyptian politicians or the image the politicians want the people to know. The corrupt leaders one after another have attempted to cover their problems and weakness by attracting attention to the damming problem away from the government corruptive functions. They never succeeded and each was consumed by movements of the people. Those are the messages of the arts and I enjoyed them.
Posted by: Zeg Fanta | September 22, 2020 at 11:54 PM