APA-Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) Egypt has been vehemently opposed to the building of a controversial dam on the River Nile which Ethiopia says is intended to boost her power generation capacity.
There has been tension ever since the dam had reached filling stage.
Now Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s announcement of the completion of the fourth and final filling of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) reservoir has been met with anger in Cairo which maintains that a dam on the Nile River will significantly cut its share of water from one of Africa’s longest rivers.
Egypt had even hinted at its preparedness to go to war over the dam, while neighbour Sudan also opposes the Ethiopian project.
Meanwhile PM Ahmed congratulated his compatriots on what he called a milestone achievement.
“We have encountered internal challenges and external pressures; and we have overcome all these challenges and are able to reach this phase,” Ahmed wrote on social media X, formerly known as Twitter.
The filling is said to mark a major milestone for the East African country in its quest to satisfy the growing energy demands for its socioeconomic development.
In July, Ethiopia announced that the fourth filling of the dam reservoir would extend until September but stressed the downstream countries would not be harmed, an assurance Cairo has dismissed as ”dangerously misleading”.
The latest announcement about the filling the dam followed just weeks after Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan held a new round of negotiations over the long-running dispute regarding East Africa’s biggest hydroelectric dam project.
Ethiopia commenced filling the dam reservoir in 2020 despite concerns from Egypt and Sudan, which eventually led to the suspension of relevant tripartite negotiations in 2021.
The Horn of Africa country started to build the GERD on the Nile River in 2011 and expects the giant hydropower project to generate more than 6,000 megawatts of electricity an hour.
The project, however, has been a major issue of dispute among the three Nile-bounded countries.
Ethiopia reiterates that the dam will power its development aspirations and boost its ambition to attain middle-income status in the near future.
Meanwhile, Egypt and Sudan frequently express their concern that the dam would affect their share of the river waters.
MG/as/APA