Ethiopia outsmarts Egypt by building the GERD by itself
Tigrai Onlne - April 23, 2014
Tigrai Online’s comment about an article by Richard Lough on Reuters News
It is great the Egyptians finally admitted they have been working day and night to keep Ethiopia in the dark. Egypt has been following it’s selfish and greedy policy for too long without any challenge. Well now the people who really won the resources want their fair share, the Egyptians don’t know what to do.
Sometimes they threaten military attack, sometimes they say they are going to use neighbors countries to do their dirty work and the other times they say they are going to support Ethiopian terrorist groups to destabilize Ethiopia. They know and the world knows none of the above will stop Ethiopia form constructing the dam.
The only thing they have left to do is to work with Ethiopia to get their share of the water. They also need to inform their population the source of the River Nile is Ethiopia not Egypt. Going around the world asking every financial institution to stop giving loan to Ethiopia is not going to bring water to the Egyptian people, because we the Ethiopian people will finance it ourselves.
To Mr. Richard Lough the writer of the article below: You said “The dam is now a quarter built” The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is 33% completed which is on third not 25% a quarter. The Egyptian media and officials refer to the GERD as a purposed dam, even though it is one third done to spread false propaganda. We hope you are not doing the same thing.
Following is a few paragraphs from Reuters news this morning
Ethiopia's bold decision to pay for a huge dam itself has overturned generations of Egyptian control over the Nile's waters, and may help transform one of the world's poorest countries into a regional hydropower hub.
By spurning an offer from Cairo for help financing the project, Addis Ababa has ensured it controls the construction of the Renaissance Dam on a Nile tributary. The electricity it will generate - enough to power a giant rich-world city like New York - can be exported across a power-hungry region.
But the decision to fund the huge project itself also carries the risk of stifling private sector investment and restricting economic growth, and may jeopardize Ethiopia's dream of becoming a middle income country by 2025.
The dam is now a quarter built and Ethiopia says it will start producing its first 750 megawatts of electricity by the end of this year. In the sandy floor of the Guba valley, near the Sudanese border, engineers are laying compacted concrete to the foundations of the barrage that will tower 145 meters high and whose turbines will throw out 6,000 megawatts - more than any other hydropower project in Africa.
So far, Ethiopia has paid 27 billion birr ($1.5 billion) out of a total projected cost of 77 billion birr for the dam, which will create a lake 246 km (153 miles) long.
It is the biggest part of a massive program of public spending on power, roads and railways in one of Africa's fastest growing economies. Ethiopia's output has risen at near double digit rates for a decade, luring investors from Sweden to China.
But economists warn that squeezing the private sector to pay for the public infrastructure could hurt future prospects. Growth is already showing signs of slowing.
Even so, Addis Ababa says the price is worth paying to guarantee Egypt has no veto over the dam, the centerpiece of a 25-year project to profit from East Africa's accelerating economic growth by exporting electricity across the region.
"We did not want this dam to suffer from external pressures, particularly with respect to financing," said Fekahmed Negash, a director within Ethiopia's Ministry of Water and Energy.
Source: Reuters - http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/23/us-ethiopia-energy-insight-idUSBREA3M0BG20140423