Wednesday, July 03, 2013
The book, a history of Hoover Dam, fell from the dashboard as
Simegnew Bekele drove through the rugged mountains where the engineer is
leading construction work on Ethiopia’s massive Nile River dam.
“This book,” he said, picking it up, “I am reading it now ...
It’s a fascinating story. This dam too (has) a history one day someone
will write about.”
Simegnew’s sentiment illustrated the great expectations of a dam that
has raised tensions between this Horn of Africa nation and Egypt, which
is concerned the ongoing project will diminish its share of Nile River
waters. Reading the book, a gift from Ethiopians he met in New York
recently, the engineer has come to see similarities between the
Ethiopian dam-in-progress and Hoover Dam, the Great Depression-era
project that in its time became an icon of American enterprise under
difficult economic conditions. “Hoover Dam was constructed when
America was (in) depression,” Simegnew said. “It was an enormous
success. I am sure our dam too will herald a bright future for this
country and also for the whole region.”
Despite the concerns of
Nile-dependent Egypt, Ethiopia —whose economy suffers frequent power
failures —has vowed to proceed with the dam that would become the
biggest hydro-electric power station in Africa. In May, Ethiopia started
to divert Nile waters to make way for the $4.2 billion dam which, when
it is finished, will have the capacity to produce 6,000 megawatts of
electricity. Ethiopia’s national electricity corporation says potential
buyers of Ethiopia’s electricity will include the two Sudans, Kenya,
Djibouti, Somalia, Uganda and even wary Egypt.
In Ethiopia’s
Benishangul-Gumuz region near Sudan, some 800 kilometers (500 miles)
from the capital, workers labor under intensely hot conditions and
gigantic machines smash boulders in order to make the dam a reality by
July 2017. Even as Egyptian and Ethiopian diplomats talk over the dam’s
impact on the volume of Blue Nile waters flowing to Egypt, construction
work is proceeding apace here in a sign of Ethiopia’s determination to
resist Egyptian pressure. Some 5,000 Ethiopians, joined by 200
expatriates from 20 nations, work in shifts 24 hours a day. Visitors
here have to go through multiple security checkpoints that are manned by
soldiers wearing “anti-guerrilla” tags on their fatigues. The Italian
construction firm Salini is building the dam while the Chinese company
Electric Power Equipment and Technology Co. Ltd. is building power lines
for it.
Simegnew, the engineer, told reporters last week that
some of the diverted Nile waters are accumulating in a temporary coffer
dam, and officials say that the filling of the reservoir will start next
year. Power lines to connect the dam’s output with the national grid
are being put up, and cables from the national grid extend to Djibouti,
Sudan and, later, Kenya.
“During the filling of the reservoir,
which will take five to six years, we won’t have any fixed impoundment
rate to make sure the water flow downstream will not be significantly
affected,” Simegnew said.
Ethiopia’s Nile project has won the support of upstream countries in
East and Central Africa that have been meeting under the banner of the
Nile Basin Initiative, which endorsed the new Nile River Cooperative
Framework Agreement. That accord, ratified last month by Ethiopia’s
parliament, was conceived to replace the 1929 treaty written by Britain
that awarded Egypt veto power over other countries’ Nile projects. Sudan
and Egypt signed a deal in 1959 splitting the Nile waters between them
without giving other countries consideration. Egyptian politicians have
suggested attacks against Ethiopia to sabotage the dam, and Egyptian
President Mohammed Morsi last month warned that “all options are open”
to challenge the project.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn said last week
that, while he was willing to accommodate Egypt’s concerns, the
continued constructing of the dam and its size are “red lines” that will
not be crossed by the negotiations.
If the dam is completed without incident, it would be a remarkable
achievement for Ethiopia’s leaders who dreamed of something big and
wanted an equally grand name for the dam. Originally a secret project
called X, the dam was later called the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.
David
Shinn, former U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia, said he doubted Egypt’s
dispute with Ethiopia over the Nile River would degenerate into armed
conflict.
“Following long periods of silence, there are periodic
outbursts as we have seen in the past month,” said Shinn, who is now a
professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School of
International Affairs. “I expect this trend to continue but not to
result in conflict between the two countries.”
The Ethiopian
government, which secured a $1 billion loan from China for power lines
for the Nile dam, says it will continue to raise more funds
domestically. Government employees have for the second time paid their
one-month salary to buy bonds the government is selling. Private banks
are ordered by the central bank to buy bonds worth millions of the
Ethiopian birr.
Yilma Seleshi of the Ethiopian Water Resource
Institute says the dam would consistently bring in hard currency for at
least a century, returning the massive investment it is requiring. In
his study presented during a meeting at Ethiopia’s Addis Ababa
University last week, he estimated that Ethiopia would earn 2 million
euros in daily income from power sales to neighboring countries.