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Second turbine at GERD goes online, despite outcry from Egypt, Sudan
ETHIOPIA
ETHIOPIA has started operating the second of 13 planned turbines within the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), a multi-billion-dol- lar hydropower plant to which downstream countries Egypt and Sudan have always been opposed over fears it will exacerbate water scar- city in their countries.
Ethiopia, the second most populous coun- try in Africa, has the second biggest electricity deficit on the continent, according to the World Bank, with about two-thirds of its population of 110mn lacking a connection to the grid. The Horn of Africa country eyes a total power capacity of up to 5,150MW from GERD, some of which will be exported to neighbouring nations, after its completion by the end of 2023.
At a ceremony on August 11, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed congratulated his countrymen on the latest development on the dam, which will ultimately cost $5bn to complete and be the big- gest hydropower plant in Africa. “[We are proud of being able to make the history that was said to be impossible,” he said, Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation (EBC) reports.
Addis Ababa unilaterally completed the first and second phase filling of the dam’s 74bn-cu- bic-metre reservoir over the past two years and recently started the third filling during the cur- rent flood season, which lasts until September.
Project manager engineer Kifle Horo said at
the ceremony that the third filling is in progress and construction of civil works is 95% complete, with the electromechanical factory and planta- tion work 61% done, and water transmission and steel works 73% finished, according to the Ethiopian News Agency.
GERD, formerly known as the Millennium Dam, is a gravity dam on the Blue Nile in Ethi- opia under construction since 2011. The dam is in the Benishangul-Gumuz Region of Ethio- pia, about 45km east of the border with Sudan. Egypt’s Foreign Ministry accused Ethiopia of further violation of a preliminary deal signed between the three nations in 2015, prohibiting any party from taking unilateral actions in the use of Blue Nile waters.
Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan last met to try to resolve the issue in mid-2021 under the auspices of the African Union (AU) in Kinshasa, without reaching an agreement.
Consequently, Cairo and Khartoum took the matter to the UN Security Council, which issued a statement in mid-September 2021 urging the countries to resume negotiations with the aim of finalising a binding agreement on operating GERD acceptable to all the parties.
Egypt says the damn threatens to deprive it of its historical quota of water from the iconic Blue Nile during the third stage of GERD’s filling operation. ™
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