Chicago – September 12, 2025
Ethiopia officially inaugurated Africa’s largest hydroelectric dam on Tuesday, a project that will provide energy to millions of Ethiopians while deepening a rift with downstream Egypt that has unsettled the region.
Ethiopia, the continent’s second most populous nation with a population of 120 million, sees the $5 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on a tributary of the Nile as central to its economic ambitions.
The dam’s output has gradually increased since the first turbine was turned on in 2022, and it reached its maximum 5,150 MW of power on Tuesday. That puts it among the 20 biggest hydroelectric dams in the world, at about one-quarter of the capacity of China’s Three Gorges Dam.
At a ceremony on Tuesday at the site in Guba, an Ethiopian fighter jet flew low over the mist from the dam’s white waters, which plunge 170 meters (558 feet).
Beneath the canopy of a giant Ethiopian flag, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed addressed a crowd of dignitaries including the presidents of Somalia, Djibouti and Kenya.
“To our (Sudanese and Egyptian) brothers; Ethiopia built the dam to prosper, to electrify the entire region and to change the history of black people,” Abiy said. “It is absolutely not to harm its brothers.”
Abiy has said the dam will improve access to electricity for the almost half the population who had none as recently as 2022, and export the surplus to the region.
The dam’s reservoir has flooded an area larger than Greater London, which the government says will provide a steady water supply for irrigation downstream while limiting floods and drought.
