Ethiopia to Accommodate Nations Concerned by Dam on Nile

Ethiopia’s government said it will try to accommodate nations concerned that their water supplies may be affected by the damming of the Blue Nile River, as Sudanese and Egyptian officials met to discuss 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 yesterday. The 80 billion-birr ($4.3 billion) hydropower project may begin generating 600 megawatts of electricity next year and is set for completion in 2017, he said.

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam
will be twice the size of Singapore.
Source: DigitalGlobe via Getty Images

The schedule for filling the 74 billion cubic meter reservoir is expected to be a “major concern” for the downstream nations of Egypt and Sudan, said Debretsion. Once completed, the power plant will be Africa’s largest with the capacity to generate 6,000 megawatts. Egypt, which relies on the Nile for almost all of its water, has historically opposed upstream projects on the world’s longest river.
“We are not selfish, we are not only looking at our national interest,” said Debretsion, who is also chairman of the state-owned Ethiopian Electric Power Corp. “This is an international river and we will try our best to accommodate their benefits and their interests.”

BBC Hardtalk with US Secretary of State John Kerry at Addis Ababa University

Boosting Ethiopia’s Economy, One Shoe at a Time

AFRICANGLOBE – For Bethlehem Tilahun, the answer to ending poverty in Africa is not aid or sympathy or donations from the outside. It’s shoes.

Specifically, building a successful shoe manufacturing business that creates jobs, empowers employees, like the one she founded SoleRebels, the first ever global footwear company to come out of a developing country.

“You don’t build your economy based on aid, you want to build your economy based on the way SoleRebels built its business, so that it’s sustainable,” Bethlehem said.

SoleRebels highlights how burgeoning enterprises can transform economies across Africa.

By shifting away from a reliance on exporting raw materials to the production of premium products such as shoes, Africa can ease its dependency on aid and slowly move toward industrialised growth.