Cairo: Egyptian President Abdul Fattah Al Sissi travelled on Friday to Ethiopia to attend a major African gathering amid worries in his country about a controversial Ethiopian dam on the Nile.

Al Sissi will attend the two-day African Union summit, which is due to open Saturday in the capital Addis Ababa.

Egyptian officials have said that Al Sissi will hold meetings with other African leaders on the sidelines of the gathering on issues of mutual interest.

Ethiopia’s Renaissance Dam has triggered wide fears in Egypt, which relies heavily on the Nile to cover the water needs of its population of 90 million people.

“The file of the Renaissance Dam is very important for Egypt,” presidential spokesman Alaa Yousuf said.

“President Al Sissi is paying full attention to this,” he added in TV remarks.

The Cairo-Addis Ababa ties deteriorated in 2013 when Egypt’s then President Mohammad Mursi and other politicians threatened in a meeting, broadcast live on air, to bomb Ethiopia over its building of the dam.

In July 2013, the army led at the time by Al Sissi, deposed Mursi following enormous street protests against his one-year rule.

Al Sissi has been keen to defuse the row since he took office in 2014.

Last year, Al Sissi signed with Ethiopia a framework pact on the dam. In an attempt to dispel Egyptians’ concerns about the dam, expected to be completed next year, Al Sissi said in a public address last month that there is no reason to worry about that the facility.

“We understand that they [Ethiopians] want to live the same way we want to live. There are negotiations between us to fulfil our joint interests,” he said at the time.

Addis Ababa has repeatedly said that the $4.7 billion (Dh17.2 billion) dam will not harm other Nile countries including Egypt and Sudan.

Officials from the three countries have since held several times and picked two French consultancy firms to carry out studies on the potential impact of the dam on downstream countries. The studies are expected to be completed by November this year.

The dam is expected to be Africa’s largest hydroelectric power plant with a storage capacity of 74 billion cubic metres of water.

Egypt’s annual quota of the Nile waters is estimated at 55.5 billion cubic metres. Water sharing among the ten Nile Basin countries is regulated under a colonial-era treaty. Some Nile Basin countries have said the treaty is unfair.