On September 9, 2025, the government of Ethiopia officially inaugurated Africa’s largest dam, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). This massive project was under construction from 2011 to 2023 and was in the process of being filled for the past two years. A gravity dam on the Blue Nile River, about twenty-eight miles east of the border with Sudan, its primary purpose is electricity production to relieve the country’s energy shortage and to export power to neighboring countries. With a capacity of 5.15 gigawatts, it is the largest hydroelectric dam in Africa and among the twenty largest in the world.

While the GERD will stand as a remarkable milestone in African development, it is also the source of some problems. Egypt has opposed the project, raising concerns that it will reduce the downstream water supply on the Blue Nile. The Ethiopian government rebuffed Egypt’s claims, going so far as to accuse Egypt of collaborating with anti-Ethiopia elements and continuing a policy of preventing Ethiopian development along the Nile. Sudan has also registered opposition to the project, calling for joint management of the river.

A Project Long in the Making . . .

The idea of a dam on the Blue Nile dates back to studies conducted by American engineers before 1964. The United States Bureau of Reclamation surveyed the Blue Nile between 1956 and 1964, during the reign of Emperor Haile Selassie, and identified a site for the dam.

Due to the 1975 coup d’état, which overthrew Selassie, Somalia’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1977 to 78, and the fifteen-year Ethiopian Civil War between the military junta and Ethiopian-Eritrean rebels, no progress was made on the project until the early 2000s. The government surveyed the site from 2009 to 2010 and submitted a design for the dam in November 2010.

The project was made public on March 30, 2011, and a day later, the government awarded a US$4.8 billion contract to an Italian company, Salini Impregilo. In April 2011, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi laid the dam’s foundation stone, and the project, known as the Millennium Dam, was renamed the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.

. . . And So is the Opposition

The estimated $5 billion cost of the project is approximately 7 percent of Ethiopia’s 2016 GNP. Egypt has long campaigned to keep control of Nile water sharing, resulting in a lack of international financing for projects on the Blue Nile. As a result, Ethiopia was forced to finance the GERD through internal fundraising in the form of selling bonds and soliciting contributions from workers.

Egypt has opposed the project from its inception. Depending on the Nile for approximately 90 percent of its water, Egypt demanded that Ethiopia stop construction as a precondition to any negotiations on the issue. While Ethiopia’s neighbor, Sudan, has alternately supported and opposed the project, other Nile riparian states (which are part of the Nile Basin Initiative) support it.

Ethiopia denies that the dam will negatively impact downstream water flow. It contends that it will, in fact, increase water flows to Egypt by reducing evaporation on Lake Nasser, the manmade lake in southern Egypt and northern Sudan that was created by the construction of the Aswan Dam.

Making History, Both Positive and Negative

Before the launch of the GERD, Egypt’s Aswan Dam was the largest dam in Africa. Ethiopia, which also has the Gilgel Gibe II and Tekeze Dams, can now claim three of the ten largest dams on the continent.

Despite a lack of international funding, other than China offering a $1.2 billion loan in 2013 to build transmission lines and an additional $1.8 billion in 2019 for renewable energy infrastructure, the $5 billion project was financed through crowdsourcing through internal fundraising, setting it apart from most other major infrastructure projects in Africa and making it a source of national pride for Ethiopia.

All the energy from the GERD will go into Ethiopia’s national grid to support development throughout the country. Excess power will be available to neighboring countries, including Egypt and Sudan. In addition to these benefits, the reservoir formed by the dam is expected to provide up to 7,000 tons of fish per year.

Though not confirmed, the dam might mitigate the impact of some of Sudan’s flooding. On the negative side, however, a lack of flooding could severely impact Egypt’s farmers, who depend on annual flooding to replenish the soil.

While Egypt’s efforts to stop the project failed, its opposition continues. Egypt asserts its “right” to regulate the waters of the Nile, based on colonial-era agreements which the other nations on the Nile were not party to: primarily the 1929 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty and the 1959 Egypt-Sudan Treaty. The treaties give Egypt over 50 percent of the waters of the Nile and its tributaries and grant Egypt veto power over any construction projects on the Nile or its tributaries. The terms of the treaties can only be fully implemented, though, if none of the nine other countries on the Nile access or utilize any water from the Nile or its tributaries, and their water rights—even of the water originating within their territory—are dependent on Egypt and Sudan’s goodwill.

The controversy surrounding the GERD will not be easily solved. But a starting point would be for all of the countries along the Nile to sit down and hammer out a replacement for the existing treaties that is more aligned with international transboundary water law. The basic requirements of this law are:

• All states are entitled to equitable and reasonable use,
• And have an obligation not to cause significant harm to others,
• And have a duty to cooperate.

The existing Nile treaties disregard the rights of other countries on the Nile and, by failing to give them their fair share of Nile water, interfere with their economic development.

The question of the fairness of the GERD is moot at this point, but moving forward, the operation of this and the construction of other Nile hydro-projects should be approached with a mood of cooperation and respect for the sovereignty and rights of all parties.

Image: Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed speaks during the inauguration of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) built along the Blue Nile in Guba, Benishangul-Gumuz region, Ethiopia, September 9, 2025. REUTERS/ Tiksa Negeri