Ethiopia celebrates Africa’s largest hydroelectric dam as Egypt and Sudan categorical fears over water safety.
Printed On 9 Sep 2025
Ethiopia has inaugurated Africa’s largest hydroelectric dam on the Blue Nile, because the $5bn mission continues to sow dismay with downstream neighbours Sudan and Egypt.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has hailed the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) as a “shared alternative” for the area that’s anticipated to generate greater than 5,000 megaWatts of energy and permit surplus electrical energy to be exported.
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A handful of regional leaders, together with Kenya’s President William Ruto and Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, attended the festivities in individual on Tuesday, which kicked off the evening earlier than with lantern shows and drones writing slogans reminiscent of “geopolitical rise” and “a leap into the long run”.
However Sudan and Egypt – who rely closely on the Nile for water provides – have expressed fears that the dam will threaten their water safety and even breach worldwide regulation. Their leaders didn’t attend the inauguration of the dam.
The Blue Nile, one of many Nile’s two principal tributaries, flows north into Sudan after which Egypt. The dam is situated simply 14km (9 miles) east of the Sudanese border, measuring 1.8km (1.1 miles) vast and 145 metres (0.1 mile) tall.
“I perceive their worries, due to course, if you happen to have a look at Egypt from the sky, you see that the road of life is existent” due to the Nile, Pietro Salini, the CEO of Italian firm Webuild that constructed the dam, advised Al Jazeera. However “regulating the water from this dam will create a further profit” to neighbours, he added.
‘Steady menace to stability’
GERD has spawned regional rigidity because it was launched in 2011, with years of cooperation talks between Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt nonetheless stalled.
Final week, Sudan and Egypt launched a joint assertion calling Ethiopia’s actions “unilateral” and saying the dam posed a “steady menace to stability”.
Sudan’s Roseires Dam, situated about 110km (70 miles) downstream of GERD, faces potential future results if Ethiopia have been to carry out giant water releases with out coordination, studies Al Jazeera’s Mohamed Vall.
“Roseires is the closest, it’s 60 years older, and when constructed was 25 instances smaller – and can probably bear the brunt of the fallout if something goes improper on the Ethiopian dam,” Vall stated.
However GERD might also present advantages reminiscent of regulating the annual circulate of the river and decreasing potential flooding in villages on the banks of the Nile.
Abdullah Abderrahman, Roseires Dam administration supervisor, advised Al Jazeera that GERD has helped to regulate overflow at Roseires that “was extraordinarily huge”.
“Then there may be the discount of the large quantities of silt and bushes that the wet season used to convey into Roseires, inflicting its storage capability to shrink by a 3rd,” Abderrahman added.
Dessalegn Chanie Dagnew, affiliate professor of water sources at Bahir Dar College in Ethiopia and a member of the Ethiopian parliament, advised Al Jazeera the dam’s advantages may ultimately attain past assuaging flooding and silt.
Reasonably than creating rigidity, he stated, GERD “may also function a mission that may actually result in regional integration and cooperation”.