In an era of fractured multilateralism and resurgent resource nationalism, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) stands as one of the most contested yet emblematic projects of the Global South’s strategic agency. This study analyses how Ethiopia’s pursuit of hydropower sovereignty reconfigures regional power relations and tests the limits of cooperative geoeconomics within the Nile Basin. Anchored in a mixed qualitative design, the research draws on field interviews conducted across Ethiopia, Sudan, and Egypt, complemented by policy documents and regional reports. The analysis reveals that the GERD represents more than an infrastructural endeavour; it embodies a shift in the balance of agency, where a lower-riparian power historically ‘marginalised’ in hydro-diplomacy leverages development finance and renewable energy transitions to redefine its geopolitical posture. While Ethiopian respondents framed the dam as an instrument of economic modernity and collective resilience, downstream perceptions shift between pragmatic adaptation and existential threat. Yet, across the Basin, a cautious recognition emerged that regional interdependence through electricity trade and cooperative dam management could convert hydro-political contestation into shared economic opportunities. The paper argues that the GERD illuminates a new mode of Global South agency: infrastructural diplomacy, where development megaprojects serve simultaneously as tools of domestic transformation and as a form of negotiation capital in fragmented global governance. Ultimately, the findings suggest that the future of Africa’s geoeconomic sovereignty will depend not merely on resource control but on the institutionalisation of cooperative mechanisms that transform asymmetrical power into collective sustainability.
Ezugwu et al. (2026) studied this question.