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.