United States President Donald Trump repeated a demonstrably false claim at Davos in January 2026, asserting that America "stupidly financed" Ethiopia's Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). The claim has been categorically denied by Ethiopian officials, yet Addis Ababa has remained conspicuously silent on the international stage.
The facts are unambiguous. The GERD, a $5 billion hydroelectric project on the Blue Nile, was funded entirely through Ethiopian government bonds, diaspora contributions, and domestic taxation over 14 years of construction. No American money was involved in the core construction, according to the GERD Coordination Office.
"This is Ethiopia's project, built by Ethiopia, for Ethiopia," says Dr. Aklilu Dalelo, a development economist at Addis Ababa University. "The claim that the US financed it is not just wrong—it erases the sacrifice of millions of Ethiopians who contributed to this national endeavor."
Yet Ethiopia's government has not issued a forceful international rebuttal. No press conference, no UN statement, no diplomatic pushback. The silence has allowed Egypt to leverage Trump's falsehood to intensify pressure for a binding agreement that would grant Cairo effective veto power over GERD operations and future Ethiopian dam projects.
Egypt has long sought to enforce colonial-era treaties from 1929 and 1959 that allocated the majority of Nile water to Egypt and Sudan, leaving upstream nations like Ethiopia with no allocation whatsoever. has consistently rejected these agreements as illegitimate vestiges of colonialism.
