Paper short abstract:

The paper analyzes the use of massive infrastructural projects, dams in particular, for political mobilization in authoritarian regimes. We take the Nile basin as a case study, proposing a diachronic comparison between the Aswan High Dam and the ongoing project of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).

Paper long abstract:

The paper focuses on the politics of dam-building as an instrument of political mobilization in authoritarian regimes. It takes the Nile basin as a case study, proposing a diachronic comparison between the construction of the Aswan High Dam in Egypt during the 1960s and the current realization of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).

Since the coining of the term "hydropolitics" by John Waterbury in 1979, an ample literature has examined the subject from the perspective of international relations, however neglecting the domestic determinants and uses of hydropolitics.

Post-independence governments in Africa and Asia have often portrayed dams as a shortcut to industrialization and food self-sufficiency. The "hydraulic mission" has provided ruling classes with a unique tool to mobilize the masses, repress dissent and extract material resources.

Therefore, while water management is often presented by political élites as a merely technical issue, it is an inherently political field of action in terms of Foucaultian gouvernmentalité.

Analyzing the narrative deployed by the ruling classes, our comparison is aimed at understanding if and how the political exploitation of such huge national projects has changed in the course of a half-century, given the deeply mutated regional and international context. While the Aswan High Dam affair was rooted in both decolonization and cold war dynamics, the building of the GERD recalls the typical authoritarian-technocratic formula of "developmentalism".

Archive research has been conducted regarding the Aswan High Dam, while field research in Egypt and Ethiopia has been undertaken with reference to the GERD.