Ethiopia: The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam
The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is both an achievement and a beginning. Years of erratic electricity have been a brake on productivity and development in Africa’s second-most populous country.
Samuel Getachew in Addis Ababa
Ethiopia inaugurated the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam last week. At 5.15 gigawatts, it is Africa’s largest hydropower project – and a national symbol. Save for a $1-billion loan from China Exim Bank, local revenue and citizen contributions met most of its $4-billion cost. More than 25,000 people took part in its 14-year construction.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has promised the dam will accelerate industrial growth, generate foreign currency, and provide affordable electricity. The government estimates national power access for Ethiopia’s population of 129-million could rise from 54% now to 78% within a decade.
From the beginning, it was framed as a national project. Ethiopians at home and in the diaspora bought bonds and made donations. This crowdfunding became a rallying cry for self-determination. Public celebrations in Addis Ababa and across the country greeted its opening, with commentators comparing it to a present-day Adwa – the historic victory over Italian colonial forces in 1896.
“Those who initiated, supported, and fought for this project have etched their names into the history of the Renaissance Dam. To all who gave, whether through finances, knowledge, energy, media, diplomacy, or professional skill, you are forever remembered as Ethiopia’s dedicated children,” Abiy said at its inauguration this month, which was scheduled to coincide with the Ethiopian New Year.
In the region, Ethiopia has sold the dam as a Pan-African asset from which neighbours like Sudan, Kenya, and Djibouti can import electricity. Abiy argues that it would pay for itself in seven years and has pledged the construction of 10 more dams within the next 15 years. That promise does nothing to calm water-politics anxieties downstream in Cairo, but ordinary Ethiopians are ecstatic.
The dam is both an achievement and a beginning. Years of erratic electricity have been a brake on productivity and development in Africa’s second-most populous country.
Health centres in rural Ethiopia are unable to use modern machines like X-rays or ultrasounds, which means most treatment is simply based on a patient’s history and description of symptoms.
The Renaissance Dam promises to erase those hardships, although it won’t happen overnight. Ethiopia will need to expand grid connections by building transmission lines before electricity access reaches its rural areas.
It’s such details, rather than the friction with downstream neighbours, that Ethiopians will care about in the years to come. Right now they bask in a renewed sense of national pride, at the centre of eastern Africa’s energy future.
Even with its infernal feuds, I think of Ethiopia more as a civilization - one of world’s oldest and continuous civilizations - more than merely claimed square miles of land in the horn of Africa. It is good to see another of its many successes.
Couldn’t the Government develop solar power ?