It is mismanagement that floods the Nile

For thousands of years, the Nile flood has been a defining event in the life of the valley’s peoples. It carried the renewing silt that fertilized the land, and from that silt, houses were built with clay washed down from the Ethiopian plateau.

The flood also set the rhythm of the agricultural calendar, its arrival marking, for the ancient Egyptians, the birth of a new year.

But the river is no longer what it once was.

Dams, barrages, and reservoirs now regulate its flow, turning it from a free, living river into a disciplined channel—especially in Egypt, at its final stretch.

In Sudan, however, the situation is different.

The flood there remains closer to a recurring natural phenomenon tied to climate, though its intensity varies from year to year depending on the scale of the inundation and the readiness of Sudan’s smaller dams.

A measured statement that overlooks the war

Despite Ethiopia’s promises that the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam/GERD, which is located only 40 kilometers from Sudan’s border, would make the Nile there a calm, regulated canal, Addis Ababa’s unilateral management and opaque data have intensified the flood crisis, particularly in Sudan’s low-lying states.

On top of war, weak infrastructure and poor water planning, Ethiopia’s actions compounded people’s hardships, after the flood caused dozens of deaths across several states, displaced dozens of families, and caused damage to hundreds of feddans of farmland.

Confronting these losses, Sudan’s Ministry of Agriculture issued a statement at the end of September, in which it pledged to serve the public, saying, “We have resolved not to spare any effort in serving the people and restoring services in the water and agriculture sectors.”

It then offered explanations for the flood: a shift in rainfall patterns and a delayed autumn; a 60–100% increase in White Nile inflows above the average since 2020; and releases from the Renaissance Dam that reached 750 million cubic meters per day (mcm/d) starting Sept. 10, 2025.

More importantly, the statement stressed the need to avoid alarmism, noting that “reaching flood level does not necessarily mean an area is entirely submerged, but that water has reached the edge of the river's channel.”

Sudan thus presented a coherent picture of a flood that is basically natural in origin and resulted in tangible human and material losses, yet is still linked to climate change and to dams. The ministry also communicated this to the public in measured, scientific language.

Still, while the statement reflected an awareness of the phenomenon’s complexity and compound causes, it overlooked an important aspect: the war in Sudan.

This conflict has had an impact on the efficiency of dam operation and management, as well as contributing to the drop in agricultural water use because of the war’s effect on farming and farmers, including in the Gezira Scheme, Sudan’s largest agricultural project.

Satellite images indicate a sharp decline in planted areas within the scheme due to the war that has raged since 2023 between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces.

An engineered, man-made flood

In Egypt, on the other hand, the Nile has come to resemble a vast industrial canal, strictly managed through precise and secretive policies controlled by the Ministry of Irrigation. This year, however, the scene looked different.

Although Egypt possesses the High Dam, Lake Nasser and the Toshka spillway, a system technically capable of absorbing any flood regardless of magnitude, recent days in Menoufiya Governorate, especially the village of Dalhamo, saw homes and farmland inundated as Nile levels rose. Residents resorted to boats to move around and carried children on their shoulders, in tragic scenes not witnessed for more than 60 years, since before the High Dam was completed.

Local authorities urged residents to evacuate homes within the river’s protected corridor and said the flooded tracts were part of the flood plain that, by nature, are subject to submersion when levels rise.

A statement by the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation on Oct. 3 blamed what happened on Ethiopia’s “reckless unilateral management” of GERD. It accused Addis Ababa of cutting releases to 110 mcm/d on Sept. 8, then discharging more than 780 mcm in a single day three weeks later, actions it called a “media and political spectacle.”

While the statement focused on external blame, it avoided acknowledging any internal responsibility. It spoke of “real-time monitoring using the latest mathematical models” and asserted that “the land covered by water is by nature part of the river channel,” but sidestepped the substance of what unfolded domestically.

It also struck a reassuring tone, denying that “governorates were flooded” and describing events as “the submersion of land in the floodplain that the river traditionally reclaims when discharges rise.” At the same time, it blamed encroachments on the river channel for constraining conveyance capacity and exacerbating the crisis.

Such language overlooks the real issue: encroachments were not the direct cause of the administrative decision—implied but never stated in the official announcement—to open the High Dam’s discharge gates suddenly and without adequate warning to nearby residents.

That decision unleashed a social disaster whose weight fell on small farmers and those living along the riverbanks.

Water and land expert Nader Nour El-Din, a professor of water resources at Cairo University, pointed out in a Facebook post on Oct. 10 that what Egypt is witnessing today does not even resemble the highest flood in recent history in 1988.

Today’s situation, Nour El-Din argued, is the product of deliberate administrative choices: calculated volumes of water released from the High Dam’s gates that nonetheless exceed the river’s and its branches’ capacity. He criticized the lack of managerial flexibility, asking: If the Toshka spillway is operating efficiently, why weren’t waters released gradually? Why open the gates suddenly?

The lack of transparency in the Egyptian Irrigation Ministry’s statement, and its magnification of the external threat at the expense of obscuring internal decisions, makes the flood in Egypt a political production more than a natural phenomenon. It opens the door to speculation and rumor instead of providing clarity.

Reproducing a disaster narrative

A comparison between Sudan and Egypt shows that the flood is not just a passing natural event but a direct reflection of governance, policy, and the human–environment relationship.

In Sudan, the flood was presented as a complex natural event tied to climate change and dam releases, supported with figures and detail, even as it overlooked the effects of war and mismanagement. Still, officials tried to reassure the public despite the heavy toll.

In Egypt, however, the narrative casts responsibility squarely on external actors, ignoring decisive internal causes such as opening the High Dam’s gates without prior warning or a clear plan for distributing water.

A large part of the crisis in Egypt’s public conversation about water management stems from the monopoly of official bodies, especially the Ministry of Irrigation, holds over the narrative. The ministry sets both the tone and the limits of the debate, while researchers and experts are sidelined or drawn into ministry-linked projects.

Many grow hesitant to express independent views, fearing consequences for their academic futures, according to an academic who spoke to the writer on condition of anonymity.

This situation is compounded by a lack of accessible data. The ministry does not release regular or comprehensive information that would enable researchers to take part in informed public discussion. As a result, the debate often rests on partial facts, uncertainty, or imagined scenarios that are difficult to verify.

Within this context, public discourse on water and flooding remains narrow and distorted, echoing the official line while dissenting voices are demonized or accused of betrayal. The outcome is a dangerous vacuum; an absence of reliable knowledge that blocks serious scientific and civic debate.

Since the start of the GERD crisis, this approach has cultivated an atmosphere of manufactured fear: waves of alarmist rhetoric, a shortage of rational discussion, and intimidation that equates disagreement with treason.

The pattern has repeated for nearly four years. Each season brings the same cycle of hysteria and contradiction, shaping public opinion that blames outside actors while overlooking domestic failures in water management—from distribution to depletion, to the neglect of the most vulnerable.

Despite the differences in how Sudan and Egypt have managed the flood crisis, both share one outcome: it is farmers and marginalized communities who bear the cost.

In Sudan, disaster takes the form of tangible human and material loss. In Egypt, residents are displaced and lands submerged beneath a political and media narrative that dramatizes catastrophe while evading the deeper questions: Who manufactures the flood? Who bears its cost? And who reaps its gains?