Without greater oversight, Ethiopia's secretive new dam could have disastrous environmental, social and political impacts.While Egypt was undergoing dramatic political changes last year, Ethiopia was secretly moving to
unveil “Project X” – a huge hydropower dam it intends to build on the Blue Nile, 40 km from the Sudanese border.Political commentators, environmental experts and hydrologists have all voiced concerns about the dam’s ecological impact, the strain it might place on relations between the three eastern Nile nations, and the financial
burden of this mega-dam on Ethiopian citizens.
Now renamed the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, the project (due for
completion by 2015) is set to become the largest hydroelectric power plant in Africa. The scale of the project is staggering: the plant will be capable of producing almost double the electricity of Aswan High Dam in Egypt, while its 63 billion cubic metre (bcm) reservoir is double the size of Ethiopia’s largest natural lake. Crucially for Ethiopia’s Nile neighbours, the filling of this huge reservoir is also likely to greatly
reduce the flow of water to Egypt and Sudan for several years, and could even permanently alter the amount of water those countries are able to draw from the river.
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