Ethiopia outfoxes Egypt over Nile waters with its mighty damAfter outfoxing Egypt on the diplomatic stage for more than a decade, Ethiopia is se...
Published on by Water Network Research, Official research team of The Water Network
After outfoxing Egypt on the diplomatic stage for more than a decade, Ethiopia is set to officially inaugurate one of the world's biggest dams on a tributary of the River Nile, burying a colonial-era treaty that saw the UK guarantee the North African nation the lion's share of its water.
The dam - built on the Blue Nile at a cost of about $5bn (£3.7bn), with a reservoir roughly the size of Greater London - has led to a surge in Ethiopian nationalism, uniting a nation often polarised along ethnic lines and mired in conflict.
"Ethiopians may disagree on how to eat injera [their staple food], but they agree on the dam," Moses Chrispus Okello, an analyst with the South Africa-based Institute for Security Studies think-tank, told the BBC.
"They do not see it as a pile of concrete in the middle of a river, but as a monument of their achievement because Ethiopians, both at home and in the diaspora, funded the dam's construction. There were waves and waves of appeals for contributions when construction started in 2011.
"The government also issued bonds that were bought by companies and workers. So, the sense that all Ethiopians own the dam has grown exponentially, and its inauguration is a source of great pride for the nation," Mr Okello said.
Named the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (Gerd), it is Africa's largest hydro-electric plant, raising hopes that not only will it meet the 135 million-strong population's energy needs but it will also give the country "energy hegemony" and boost its foreign currency earnings, the analyst added.
Ethiopia was planning to increase the sale of electricity to neighbouring countries such as Kenya and Djibouti, with ambitions of building a transmission network to cross the Red Sea to sell to Middle Eastern states like Saudi Arabia, he said.
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- Egypt