Cairo says it has exhausted every path on the Ethiopian dam, in Sisi’s presence

Speaking at a session titled “National and Citizen Security” on the third day of Egypt Forum, with President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi in the room, Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation Hani Sewilam said Cairo had exhausted all negotiation paths on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Egypt had “exercised patience and endurance,” he said, and had signed the 2015 Declaration of Principles as a good-faith step, but found no Ethiopian response capable of producing an agreement; he accused Addis Ababa of evading signature and shifting to tracks that yielded nothing, prompting Egypt to step away. Sewilam restated that Egypt does not oppose Ethiopia’s right to development and power generation but demands a legally binding agreement on filling and operation rules. He added, pointedly, that the Nile question should not be confined to the dispute with Ethiopia.

The Egypt Forum closed on 24 October, and the presidency has spent the days since converting it into process. On 1 November Sisi approved a Cabinet-proposed annual plan to monitor sectors and issues of public concern, framed as forum follow-up, saying “citizens will remain at the centre of our attention and the primary purpose behind holding Forum 2026 annually.” The same day he launched the sixth African Union Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Development Month, calling reconstruction “not merely a humanitarian or economic endeavor, but an integral part of Africa’s peace and security framework,” and confirmed Egypt will host the sixth Aswan Forum for Sustainable Peace and Development at the end of November. In February, Egypt publicly rejected allegations that it had offered Ethiopia Red Sea access in exchange for flexibility on the dam.

Assessment: Declaring negotiations exhausted costs Cairo nothing and commits it to nothing. The dam is built and filled; there is no bilateral outcome left to win, so the minister is converting a defeat into a posture. Read Sewilam’s “not only Ethiopia” line as the operative sentence: it points at the Nile Basin Cooperative Framework Agreement and at upstream states, where Egypt still has leverage it lacks with Addis Ababa. The tell to watch is venue — an Arab League or Security Council referral would mean escalation, while a Nile Basin or African Union track means Egypt is rebuilding a coalition rather than forcing a crisis. The Aswan Forum at end-November is the obvious stage, and it lands in the same fortnight as the IMF board window.