Africa’s largest hydroelectric dam, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, or GERD, has begun operating at full capacity on a tributary of the Nile in Ethiopia. The dam was inaugurated at a ceremony on Tuesday in Guba attended by President Abiy Ahmed.
The GERD has been the focus of a bitter dispute between Ethiopia and Egypt, as the upstream disruption to the Nile’s flow could have significant effects on Egypt’s food production and water supply. So far, efforts at externally mediating the dispute, including by the United States and the African Union, have failed. And as Jonathan Fenton-Harvey wrote in September 2023, the row between the two countries now has the potential to create tensions within the BRICS group, which both Egypt and Ethiopia joined last year.
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