Addis ababa: After 14 years of relentless endeavors and unshakable dedication, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed today inaugurated the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), marking a monumental victory that crowns Ethiopia’s resilience and heralds a new era of national pride.
According to Ethiopian News Agency, Ethiopia has long been deprived of harnessing the Abay River for its development endeavors, despite contributing over 86 percent of water to downstream Nile Basin states. For millennia, generations of Ethiopians have watched the Abay River flow to basin states without serving its origin. The continued washing away of Ethiopian soil by the river has been a glaring injustice, hampering the country’s ability to utilize its water resources for development.
Against this backdrop, Ethiopia took a bold step to build a hydro power dam on the Abay River. Former Prime Minister Meles Zenawi laid the foundation stone to commence the construction of GERD on 2 April 2011. The inauguration of GERD is a clear signal to t
he world that Ethiopia is charting its own course. The dam is expected to drive regional cooperation, encouraging other African nations to foster development based on a win-win approach and leverage economic emancipation.
The GERD has created a phenomenal reservoir named Nigat Lake (Dawn Lake), with a massive capacity of 74 billion cubic meters of water. This inauguration marks one of the most joyous and monumental days in Ethiopian history. The completion of GERD evokes mixed feelings of heartbreak and euphoria among Ethiopians, as it represents the fulfillment of a dream longed for by generations.
When Ethiopia dared to realize the overdue dreams of past generations and broke ground, the GERD was met with fierce resistance rather than support. Major international financial institutions declined to finance the project, not because it lacked merit or vision, but due to the prevailing hegemony of Nile waters. Despite back-channel diplomacy and mounting pressure to halt construction, the Ethiopian people and
government pressed on with the project, determined to generate electricity for rural communities and the regional power grid.
Faced with global indifference, Ethiopia made the bold decision to finance the dam itself. This decision was a red line for the Ethiopian people and government, who endured obstacles with resilience to complete the dam. Across the nation, people rallied to contribute to the project, from civil servants donating their salaries to farmers buying bonds and artists staging concerts for fundraising.
The GERD, with a power generation capacity of over 5,150 megawatts, is set to double Ethiopia’s electricity consumption and provide clean and sustainable energy to the region. Despite years of opposition from downstream states, the GERD offers significant benefits to all Nile basin states, including Sudan and Egypt, by mitigating flood risks and sedimentation, boosting agricultural productivity, and extending the lifespan of downstream dam infrastructure.
Envisioned as a driving force for sus
tainable development, the GERD is generating hydropower to supply electricity to millions of Ethiopians who have been without light, boosting industrial growth and augmenting regional power connectivity. With abundant clean energy, Ethiopia aims to power its factories and homes, integrate economies across East Africa, and foster regional prosperity and stability.
For generations, Ethiopian songs and poems described the Abay River as a neglected might. Now, as the turbines begin to spin and lights shine across the region, the metaphor of Abay has transformed into fairness, serving all its basin states and the entire region. The Nile has spoken, and now it speaks with fairness.