Seventy-five miles before the Blue Nile flows into Sudan, Ethiopia is filling the largest reservoir in Africa, and no one but Ethiopia and Chinese interests is celebrating. At close to five billion in cost, China’s Gezhouba Corporation and Exim Bank are funding much of Ethiopia’s goals of becoming the power purveyor of North Africa. The absence of a coherent legal framework for allocating and timing the Nile’s flow has Sudan worried and Egypt furious. Like all upstream water users, Ethiopia claims its filling of the Grand Renaissance Dam will not impact downstream flows or the antiquated 1920’s agreement to share the Nile. Ethiopia sees the project as a means to provide food security, provide power to 60% of its citizens, and control drought while downstream neighbors are seeing red over the Blue Nile.

The conflict is not new. What do the US’s Lake Powell, Turkey’s Southeast Anatolia Project, and the Nile’s Grand Renaissance Dam all have in common? The answer is “Threatened Waters,” my first novel. What could possibly go wrong with that setting for a thriller?