After passing through Egypt’s own enormous dam at Aswan - only half as powerful as Ethiopia’s - the waters nourish 800 miles of densely populated farmland studded with large market towns. In Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, the Blue Nile merges with the White Nile, a snaking river that has passed through the swamps of South Sudan, where much of it evaporates.īlue and White together form the Upper Nile, the mighty, desert-cleaving waterway that gave birth to ancient kingdoms such as Kush and Pharaonic Egypt.įinally, the Nile reaches Egypt. The river flows over the dam and into the plains of Sudan, where it provides nearly every drop of irrigation water and more than half of the country’s electricity. When completed, the dam will be the 10th largest in the world and will have 13 turbines that could produce 5 gigawatts of electricity - 2½ times as much as Hoover Dam. More than 90 percent of the water that flows into Egypt originates in Ethiopia’s highlands, where gushing waterfalls feed the swift, canyon-carving river. The dam spans the Nile’s mightiest tributary - the Blue Nile, or Abay, as it is known to Ethiopians. “Everyone is worried about the dam, not just me,” said Mohamed Abdelkhaleq, 69, a lifelong farmer in Egypt’s Nile Delta, where two-thirds of the country’s food is grown. In Egypt, where water scarcity already is a problem, farmers are moving away from water-intensive crops such as rice. Moges invested $2 million in expanding his oxygen and nitrogen gas factory in anticipation of more- reliable electricity. “Having seen it all,” said Moges Alemu, 84, a factory owner who in a bygone era was Emperor Haile Selassie’s flight technician, “I can say there has never been anything as highly anticipated in this country as the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.” With or without an agreement, the dam is an imminent reality, and people in both countries are preparing for what it may bring. Ethiopia, which built the dam largely with its own money, wants the reservoir full and generating the maximum electricity as soon as the dam is complete - scheduled now for 2023. Egypt, anticipating droughts, has demanded that it be filled slowly, over more than a decade. The two countries - as well as Sudan, also heavily dependent on Nile water from Ethiopia - have tried in vain for years to forge a deal on how quickly the dam’s reservoir should be filled. Yet as thousands of workers toil day and night to finish the project, Ethiopian negotiators remain locked in talks over how the dam will affect downstream neighbors, principally Egypt. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, a 1.1-mile-long concrete colossus, is set to become the largest hydropower plant in Africa.Īcross Ethiopia, poor farmers and rich business executives alike eagerly await the 5 gigawatts of electricity officials say the dam will ultimately provide. Egyptians see their fate potentially falling into foreign hands. Ethiopians see building the dam as a fundamental right, one that could bring electricity to the more than half of Ethiopians who don’t have access at home. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam has stoked intense nationalistic fervor in both Ethiopia and Egypt. A colossal dam is near completion on Ethiopia’s stretch of the Nile, a project so large that it promises to set the country on a path to industrialization that could lift tens of millions out of poverty.ĭownstream in Egypt, where the Nile meets the sea, a starkly different picture emerges: The dam is a giant, menacing barrier that could be used to hold back the source of nearly all the country’s water.
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