Ethiopian PM Abiy Ahmed announced on Thursday that the country had completed the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) after a 15-year long effort to meet Ethiopia’s fast-growing energy needs, but which risks increasing regional tensions with Egypt.
The multi-billion dollar project was launched in 2011 as a keystone instrument of Ethiopia’s development, and started producing electricity in 2022 – it is expected to reach full capacity in the coming years up to 5,000 MW, or twice the current national capacity, and turn Ethiopia into a net-exporter, in a country where 60% of the 130 million-strong population does not have access to electricity.
But the project has also stirred up regional tensions with Egypt, downstream of the dam, which rely at 97% on the Nile to meet their agricultural needs, in a country already affected by a chronic food supply crisis. Egypt’s military government has long sought a binding agreement with Ethiopia, considering that the “international cooperation” proposed by Addis-Ababa was not enough to appease Cairo’s security concerns.
After 2020, tensions rised again, with US President Donald Trump claiming Egypt was preparing to bomb the dam – while no such thing occurred, Egypt has strengthened military cooperation with Ethiopia’s neighbors: Eritrea, Djibouti, and Somalia, which received large weapons shipments from Egyptian suppliers in 2024.
While both Egypt and Ethiopia have kept diplomatic channels open and stressed “comprehensive dialogue and cooperation”, the completion of the dam might signal another episode of escalating tensions between the two African powers over water access for their rapidly-growing populations.
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Ethiopian PM Abiy Ahmed announced on Thursday that the country had completed the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) after a 15-year long effort to meet Ethiopia’s fast-growing energy needs, but which risks increasing regional tensions with Egypt.
The multi-billion dollar project was launched in 2011 as a keystone instrument of Ethiopia’s development, and started producing electricity in 2022 – it is expected to reach full capacity in the coming years up to 5,000 MW, or twice the current national capacity, and turn Ethiopia into a net-exporter, in a country where 60% of the 130 million-strong population does not have access to electricity.
But the project has also stirred up regional tensions with Egypt, downstream of the dam, which rely at 97% on the Nile to meet their agricultural needs, in a country already affected by a chronic food supply crisis. Egypt’s military government has long sought a binding agreement with Ethiopia, considering that the “international cooperation” proposed by Addis-Ababa was not enough to appease Cairo’s security concerns.
After 2020, tensions rised again, with US President Donald Trump claiming Egypt was preparing to bomb the dam – while no such thing occurred, Egypt has strengthened military cooperation with Ethiopia’s neighbors: Eritrea, Djibouti, and Somalia, which received large weapons shipments from Egyptian suppliers in 2024.
While both Egypt and Ethiopia have kept diplomatic channels open and stressed “comprehensive dialogue and cooperation”, the completion of the dam might signal another episode of escalating tensions between the two African powers over water access for their rapidly-growing populations.