Ethiopia acts to calm fears

ETHIOPIA’s government says it will try to accommodate states concerned that their water supplies may be affected by the damming of the Blue Nile.

ETHIOPIA’s government says it will try to accommodate states concerned that their water supplies may be affected by the damming of the Blue Nile, as Sudanese and Egyptian officials met yesterday on the issue.

Ethiopia, source of one of the two tributaries of the Nile River, will start filling the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, on the Blue Nile, at the “end of next year”, Deputy Prime Minister Debretsion Gebremichael said in an interview on Tuesday. The $4.3bn hydropower project may begin generating 600MW of electricity next year and is set for completion in 2017, he said.

The schedule for filling the 74billion-cubic-metre reservoir is expected to be a “major concern” for the downstream states of Egypt and Sudan, said Mr Debretsion.

Once completed, the power plant will be Africa’s largest with the capacity to generate 6,000MW. Egypt, which relies on the Nile for almost all of its water, has historically opposed upstream Nile projects.

“We are not selfish, we are not only looking at our national interest,” said Mr Debretsion, who is also chairman of the stateowned Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation. “This is an international river and we will try our best to accommodate their benefits and their interests.”

Sudanese Water Resources and Electricity Minister Osama Abdalla Mohamed al-Hassan arrived in Cairo yesterday to discuss the issue with Egyptian officials, the state-run Middle East News Agency reported.

Egypt’s government and public are concerned that the dam may decrease the flow of the Nile, Mohamed Edrees, Egypt’s ambassador to Ethiopia, said in Addis Ababa yesterday.

“Our concern is for it not to affect our water security, to harm the water coming to Egypt. How to do it effectively on the ground and how to implement it, this is something to be left to the technicians to discuss and agree on.”

The dam, which will be twice the size of Singapore, will be full in “five to six years”, Ethiopian Water and Energy Minister Alemayehu Tegenu said at a ceremony to celebrate the diversion of the river on Tuesday in Guba, 454km northwest of Addis Ababa. “We won’t fill the reservoir at one go,” he said.

Sudan had had consultations with Ethiopia and Egypt and there was a “broad understanding on the issue”, foreign ministry spokesman Abu-Bakr al-Siddiq said in Khartoum. “We don’t have any problem with what the Ethiopians have done,” he said.

Mr Edrees said that the diversion had no “direct implication” as it did not alter the flow of the river.

A technical committee made up of neutral experts and four representatives each from Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt is expected to deliver a report on the project in a “few days”, Mr Edrees said.

Mr Debretsion said: “Actual dam construction” can start after the diversion was carried out, a “few days ago”.

The altering of the course of the Blue Nile was a milestone in the project as “we managed to direct the river on our own side”, Mr Alemayehu said. Bloomberg