Egypt is wholly dependent of the Nile for everything, literally everything. You can’t over stress the Nile to Egypt’s basic survival (from the dawn of civilization itself to today). Just look at the country, that is 100 million people straddling a damn long river in the middle of a goddamn big desert. Compare that to Ethiopia, they have 110 million people spread over a lush, green, cool, mountainous countryside.
Since most Egyptians live in the north, water issues are even more bad then it looks there. It is a very fragile country and Egypt doesn’t want to rely on upstream countries for its daily survival. But unfortunately they do, and Egypt has little to nothing to offer upstream countries who themselves would like to use the Nile waters for their own self benefit.
Sudan likes the GERD because it will ensure a lack of flooding during Ethiopia’s heavy rainy season, enabling better water and land management. Sudan isn’t as fragile to water issues as Egypt for many geographical reasons
[ul]
[li]it isn’t entirely a desert country[/li][li]it has multiple rivers which come from multiple sources[/li][li]it is too upstream to worry about water scarcity driven by water use by even further upstream countries[/li][/ul]
Also Sudan acknowledges that the GERD is essentially a
Ethiopia wants the GERD for the massive economic/developmental benefits that having Africa’s largest hydro-electrical dam would will reap. However the dam will lower the amount of yearly water Egypt receives (until the reservoir gets fully filled). Egypt wants many things from Ethiopia which Ethiopia is unwilling to provide.
The Egyptians wanted the Ethiopians to make a deal with them before even starting the project which (of course) the Ethiopians ignored making the existence of the GERD a fait accompli.
Egypt also wants Ethiopia to fill its reservoir over many (7-10?) years and to have certain control/veto over the function of the dam to which Ethiopia also finds as wholly unacceptable. Ethiopia is willing to fill the dam over a few years out of neighbourly courtesy, but they will not do anything that would hand over sovereignty to Egypt.
The GERD is a national project for Ethiopia with no external funding, only government bonds and private funds.