Ethiopia inaugurates GERD, boosting power across East Africa

Ethiopia on Tuesday inaugurated the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, a $4.8 billion to $5 billion hydroelectric megaproject on the Blue Nile that officials say will more than double the country’s power output and supply electricity across East Africa, even as Egypt and Sudan warned the move risks worsening a yearslong regional dispute over Nile waters.

The dam, built on a tributary near Ethiopia’s border with Sudan, reached its full installed capacity of about 5,150 megawatts at the inauguration after gradually bringing turbines online since 2022. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed hailed the project as a national achievement and a step toward ending chronic energy shortages, saying Ethiopia built the dam to “prosper, to electrify the entire region and to change the history of black people,” and stressing it was not intended to harm downstream neighbors. Leaders from several African countries attended the ceremony, and Kenya and South Sudan announced plans to import power.

Ethiopia has framed the dam as an engine of development. Residents outside Addis Ababa expressed hope that the new supply will transform daily life. Fanuse Adete, a widowed mother of seven who still uses kerosene...