Ethiopia thwarts Egypt by paying for Nile dam itself

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.

"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.

Very true.

But in the last quarter the US would have had negative growth without the Federal Governments ACA spending.

So as far as the private sector is concerned the US had negative economic growth last quarter.

I’ll get it right this time around. .

Thank You Magic Negro.

And nestled in this article is a bit of info almost hidden...and here we go again...

“IMF’ said ‘the economy needed restructuring’ to encourage private sector investment now crowded out by huge public projects”.

So who, pray tell, will be assigned/elected with that task of re-structuring their nation governments revenues so that outside “investors” can make merchandise of the people.

I’m not taking a stand on one side or the other. But here are some thoughts.
Due to the arid nature of the region some peculiar math starts impacting the amount of water available. When the Soviets built the Aswan dam they failed to take into account the amount of water lost to evaporation. So the dam had a huge impact on the amount of water available. This really didn’t matter as there was only one dam and it was close to the river’s terminus. Also, the pre-dam fast flow of the water held down the amount of parasite caused disease in Egypt. The water slowed and the parasites proliferated. Disease ran rampant.
The Nile’s tributaries pass through several countries, all of which are motivated to use this great resource, which to them is simply being wasted. It’s possible that if they all build dams and construct irrigation that the Nile, without which all of Egypt would starve, will look like the Rio Grande when it gets to Mexico. (Mostly, a dry ditch.)

Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on whether you’re American or Mexican, Mexico can’t do much about the Rio Grande. But there’s no question Mexico would be much richer if the Rio Grande held water they could use when it crosses their border. Unlike Mexico Egypt has a large army and an air force. Faced with extinction they will destroy the dams constructed by other governments thus contributing to the impoverishment of those countries.

The water wars, which will occur this century throughout the Middle East, will have effects widely felt around the world. Migration to western countries from those regions, for example, is likely to skyrocket. This will spread poverty and poorly developed cultures like cancer cells into what was formerly known as the first world.

There probably are solutions. For example Israel is apparently the world leader in turning salt water into fresh water. But these solutions will likely be too little and too late.

“When I say ‘cheaply modified’, I mean less expensive than war.”

I would hope you’re right. But the project will cost a definite amount which will seem a very high price. War, in the “before” picture always seems cheaply won. I wish I could count the number of before stories I’ve read from the US Civil War to World War one where the side starting it said “we’ll be home by Christmas,” or, “I sure hope there’s still some fighting when I get to the front.” Argentina started a war with the UK over the Falkland’s to keep people’s minds of their economy. They obviously thought that war was the better alternative to actually cutting the budget and dealing with their real problems. People experience magical thinking. It’s easy to imagine that if I do (fill-in-blank) all these wonderful things will follow. In reality once you’ve taken that first shot all your plans fly out the window because the enemy does what’s in their best interest, not what you imagined they’d do. So, yes, after the war it would appear to the devastated countries that cutting entitlement programs and energy and food subsidies to pay for the water project would have been cheaper but that would have been too unpopular whereas everybody loves a good war. At least in the beginning.

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