Hello everyone,
One of the coolest things I’ve ever done was visit the source of the Nile River. Well, I say the source but there are actually two main tributaries. One is the White Nile, which originates at Lake Victoria in Uganda, and the other is the Blue Nile, which starts its journey in Ethiopia. The two meet in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, and then the Nile flows downstream through the Nubian Desert and on to Cairo.
Apologies for the geography lesson (and I was terrible at geography at school), but it’s this geography that is at the root of a geopolitical dispute that some analysts have long believed could lead to the world’s first major war over water.
The source I visited was that of the Blue Nile in Ethiopia where, and this is crucial, a massive 80 percent of the Nile’s waters originate.
It’s a very special place.
They don’t call it the Blue Nile there. It is Tis Abay: “Great Smoke.”
On the bright afternoon I spent at the source, a stream of locals and priests walked down a steep hill, clutching jerry cans they filled with water they believed to be holy. At the end of the hill, three small trickles of water poured from behind a few tufts of grass. Three small trickles that birth the world’s most storied river.
On that day, construction had just begun on Ethiopia’s most ambitious project ever, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), the country’s attempt to harness more of the Nile’s water for itself - perhaps, at the expense of Egypt.
The people gathering water were fully aware of the plan and told me it filled them with a sense of national pride. For them, Tis Abay belonged to Ethiopia.
And therein lies the rub.
Let’s jump into the Q&A.
Until next Saturday,
Barry.
Tell me more about the dam
After 14 years, GERD is finally finished and it was inaugurated by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed with a huge celebration this month. The night before, drones wrote slogans in the sky above it: “geopolitical rise” and “a leap into the future.”
It’s huge. Like, really huge. The dam is now the African continent’s largest, taking first place from Egypt’s iconic Aswan Dam. It is producing 5,150 MW of power, almost as much as every other dam in Africa’s top ten combined.
The name is no accident. Ethiopians really do see it as part of a renaissance for the country, believing mega projects like this are key to a more prosperous future. When the dam was announced, it was met with excitement and the government even sold bonds so ordinary Ethiopians could finance its construction.
It should also be noted, though, that tens of thousands of people were forcibly displaced to make way for it and local communities were not consulted.
Ethiopia has long suffered crippling power shortages, which the dam could solve. In fact, the government thinks it can even help it become a net energy exporter. Obviously, such a huge boost to the country's power grid will fuel the economy, acting as a backbone for industrialization, urban development, and improved public services. It will help Ethiopia with water management, flood prevention and provide a buffer from droughts. The benefits are transformative.
So what’s the problem?
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