Switch on for Ethiopia’s Blue Nile mega-dam
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Ethiopia has begun generating electricity from its Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), set to be Africa’s largest hydroelectric plant
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GERD PROJECT

Start date: 2011
Cost: $5 billion
Power: 13 turbines will generate 5,150MW upon completion
Dam height: 145m 
Reservoir capacity
74 billion cubic metres
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Feb 20: GERD begins generating 375MW from one of its turbines
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Above: View of GERD on Feb 19, 2022. Ethiopia says dam is essential to increase its economic development and power generation capacity
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500km 310 miles
CHAD
CENTRAL AFRICAN REP.
SAUDI ARABIA
ERITREA YEMEN
Nile
Ababa
SOMALIA
TANZANIA
UGANDA
DEM. REP. OF CONGO
RWANDA 
BURUNDI
ETHIOPIA 
KENYA
INDIAN OCEAN
Nile River basin
Cairo
Aswan High Dam
Nile
SUDAN
White Nile
SOUTH SUDAN
Blue
Addis

Egypt: Fears GERD will cut its share of Nile water – about 97 percent of Egypt’s irrigation and drinking water comes from river
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Picture: Getty Images  Sources: Reuters, Stratfor    © GRAPHIC NEWS