Ethiopia celebrates Africa’s largest hydroelectric dam as Egypt and Sudan specific fears over water safety.
Printed On 9 Sep 2025
Ethiopia has inaugurated Africa’s largest hydroelectric dam on the Blue Nile, because the $5bn venture 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 particular person on Tuesday, which kicked off the evening earlier than with lantern shows and drones writing slogans comparable to “geopolitical rise” and “a leap into the longer term”.
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 legislation. Their leaders didn’t attend the inauguration of the dam.
The Blue Nile, one of many Nile’s two foremost 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) broad and 145 metres (0.1 mile) tall.
“I perceive their worries, due to course, in case you take a look at Egypt from the sky, you see that the road of life is existent” because of the Nile, Pietro Salini, the CEO of Italian firm Webuild that constructed the dam, instructed Al Jazeera. However “regulating the water from this dam will create an extra profit” to neighbours, he added.
‘Steady risk 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 risk 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 massive water releases with out coordination, stories Al Jazeera’s Mohamed Vall.
“Roseires is the closest, it’s 60 years older, and when constructed was 25 occasions smaller – and can doubtless bear the brunt of the fallout if something goes unsuitable on the Ethiopian dam,” Vall mentioned.
However GERD may additionally present advantages comparable to regulating the annual circulate of the river and lowering potential flooding in villages on the banks of the Nile.
Abdullah Abderrahman, Roseires Dam administration supervisor, instructed Al Jazeera that GERD has helped to regulate overflow at Roseires that “was once extraordinarily massive”.
“Then there’s the discount of the large quantities of silt and bushes that the wet season used to carry 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, instructed Al Jazeera the dam’s advantages may ultimately attain past assuaging flooding and silt.
Relatively than creating rigidity, he mentioned, GERD “may even function a venture that may actually result in regional integration and cooperation”.
