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Ethiopia celebrates Africa\u2019s largest hydroelectric dam as Egypt and Sudan express fears over water security.<\/em><\/p>\n Published On 9 Sep 2025<\/span>9 Sep 2025<\/span><\/p>\n Ethiopia has inaugurated Africa\u2019s largest hydroelectric dam on the Blue Nile, as the $5bn project continues to sow dismay with downstream neighbours Sudan and Egypt.<\/p>\n Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has hailed the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) as a \u201cshared opportunity\u201d for the region that is expected to generate more than 5,000 megaWatts of power and allow surplus electricity to be exported.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/p>\n A handful of regional leaders, including Kenya\u2019s President William Ruto and Somalia\u2019s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, attended the festivities in person on Tuesday, which kicked off the night before with lantern displays and drones writing slogans such as \u201cgeopolitical rise\u201d and \u201ca leap into the future\u201d.<\/p>\n But Sudan and Egypt \u2013 who rely heavily on the Nile for water supplies \u2013 have expressed fears that the dam will threaten their water security and even breach international law. Their leaders did not attend the inauguration of the dam.<\/p>\n The Blue Nile, one of the Nile\u2019s two main tributaries, flows north into Sudan and then Egypt. The dam is located just 14km (9 miles) east of the Sudanese border, measuring 1.8km (1.1 miles) wide and 145 metres (0.1 mile) tall.<\/p>\n \u201cI understand their worries, because of course, if you look at Egypt from the sky, you see that the street of life is existent\u201d thanks to the Nile, Pietro Salini, the CEO of Italian company Webuild that constructed the dam, told Al Jazeera. But \u201cregulating the water from this dam will create an additional benefit\u201d to neighbours, he added.<\/p>\n (Al Jazeera)<\/p>\n GERD has spawned regional tension since it was launched in 2011, with years of cooperation talks between Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt still stalled.<\/p>\n Last week, Sudan and Egypt released a joint statement calling Ethiopia\u2019s actions \u201cunilateral\u201d and saying the dam posed a \u201ccontinuous threat to stability\u201d.<\/p>\n Sudan\u2019s Roseires Dam, located about 110km (70 miles) downstream of GERD, faces potential future effects if Ethiopia were to perform large water releases without coordination, reports Al Jazeera\u2019s Mohamed Vall.<\/p>\n \u201cRoseires is the closest, it\u2019s 60 years older, and when constructed was 25 times smaller \u2013 and will likely bear the brunt of the fallout if anything goes wrong at the Ethiopian dam,\u201d Vall said.<\/p>\n But GERD may also provide benefits such as regulating the annual flow of the river and reducing potential flooding in villages on the banks of the Nile.<\/p>\n Abdullah Abderrahman, Roseires Dam administration manager, told Al Jazeera that GERD has helped to control overflow at Roseires that \u201cused to be extremely big\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThen there is the reduction of the huge amounts of silt and trees that the rainy season used to bring into Roseires, causing its storage capacity to shrink by a third,\u201d Abderrahman added.<\/p>\n Dessalegn Chanie Dagnew, associate professor of water resources at Bahir Dar University in Ethiopia and a member of the Ethiopian parliament, told Al Jazeera the dam\u2019s benefits could eventually reach beyond assuaging flooding and silt.<\/p>\n Rather than creating tension, he said, GERD \u201cwill also serve as a project that can really bring about regional integration and cooperation\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ethiopia celebrates Africa\u2019s largest hydroelectric dam as Egypt and Sudan express fears over water security. Published On 9 Sep 20259 Sep 2025 Ethiopia has inaugurated Africa\u2019s largest hydroelectric dam on the Blue Nile, as the $5bn project continues to sow dismay with downstream neighbours Sudan and Egypt. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has hailed the Grand<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20055,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[5155,12322,2815,611,12319,12321,12320,150,2344,7295],"class_list":{"0":"post-20054","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-dam","9":"tag-downstream","10":"tag-egypt","11":"tag-energy","12":"tag-ethiopia","13":"tag-gerd","14":"tag-inaugurates","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-sudan","17":"tag-tensions"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
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