Members of the Ethiopian Republic March Band perform in front of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam ahead of its official inauguration ceremony in Guba, on Sept. 9.LUIS TATO/AFP/Getty Images
African leaders are rallying in support of Ethiopia’s massive hydro dam on a Nile tributary, hailing it as a key step toward reducing the continent’s energy poverty, despite fierce opposition from Egypt.
The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), the biggest hydro dam in Africa, was inaugurated and brought into full production on Tuesday in a ceremony attended by presidents and dignitaries from East Africa and beyond.
The festivities on Monday night and Tuesday included a military parade, traditional dancers, drone displays and fireworks. An Ethiopian fighter jet roared low over the dam in a final dramatic flourish during the inauguration ceremony.
The 170-metre-high dam on the Blue Nile, containing 10.7 million cubic meters of concrete, cost nearly US$5-billion and took 14 years to build. After its ramp-up on Tuesday, it now produces 5,150 megawatts of power, much of which will be exported to other African countries whose economies have suffered from frequent energy shortages.
Egypt has fought hard against the dam, calling it an existential threat that could jeopardize the country’s most crucial water source, the Nile, during droughts. Sudan has also voiced concern about the dam. Both regimes boycotted Tuesday’s ceremony.
“Whoever thinks Egypt will turn a blind eye to its water rights is mistaken,” President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said last month. He vowed to take all legally permissible measures to defend Egypt’s water.
Prime Minister of Ethiopia Abiy Ahmed called the dam 'the biggest mega project in the history of the Black people' despite years of diplomatic rancour with downstream neighbour Egypt.LUIS TATO/AFP/Getty Images
Egypt’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday that it has sent a letter to the United Nations Security Council, accusing Ethiopia of taking “unilateral measures” that violate international law.
The dam’s proponents say Egypt is defending colonial-era privileges by seeking to entrench the control of the Nile waters that it was awarded by Britain a century ago when it was producing cotton for the British textile industry.
Ethiopia has lauded the hydro dam as a huge achievement and a symbol of national pride. “The era of begging has ended,” Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed told the inauguration ceremony, describing the dam as “the biggest mega project in the history of the Black people.”
He insisted that the dam will never cause any damage to other countries. “The hunger of our brothers in Egypt, in Sudan or anywhere else is also our hunger,” he said. “We must share and grow together, for we have no intention of harming anyone.”
The hydro dam is seen as vital to Ethiopia’s dreams of industrial growth and economic modernization. Almost half of its 120 million people are living without access to electricity, especially in rural regions.
But Ethiopia also plans to export power from the dam to countries such as Kenya, Tanzania and South Sudan, all of which are already negotiating deals to purchase electricity from Ethiopia.
“For Kenya, it offers immense promise,” Kenyan President William Ruto told the inauguration ceremony. “No nation should be denied the chance to build such transformative assets because, with time, they become shared sources of prosperity.”
From 2021: Why Egypt sees a massive dam in Ethiopia as a matter of life and death
South Sudanese President Salva Kiir said he was looking forward to signing a deal with Ethiopia. “This will bring power to our towns, villages, schools and hospitals, and open new opportunities for our people,” he said.
“The dam is not only about energy,” Mr. Kiir said. “It is about progress, it is about hope, it is about the future we want for our children.”
Djibouti President Ismail Omar Guelleh, who also attended the ceremony, is another African leader who plans to import electricity from the Ethiopian hydro dam.
Even an Egyptian ally, Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, joined the ceremony on Tuesday. He said Ethiopia has a right to pursue prosperity, although he also called for balance and fairness in the distribution of the river’s resources.
U.S. President Donald Trump has taken a keen interest in the Blue Nile dam, mainly by supporting Egypt’s stance against it. During a failed attempt to mediate a deal between Ethiopia and Egypt in 2019 in his first presidential term, Mr. Trump predicted that Egypt might use military force to destroy the dam. More recently, in July, he complained that the United States had “stupidly” financed most of the dam’s cost.
In fact, none of the financing was from U.S. investors. When the World Bank and other investors refused to support the project, the money was raised mostly from Ethiopian bank loans. Millions of ordinary Ethiopians donated money or bought bonds to support the project.