Ethiopia opened today, in an official ceremony, Africa’s largest-ever hydropower project: the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. At the event, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali hosted the presidents of Kenya, Djibouti, Somalia, and Barbados. The dam stands 170 meters tall and is, at its crest, 1,800 meters wide, with an installed production capacity over 5,000 MW, an expected annual output of 15,700 GWh, and the capacity to hold 74 billion cubic meters of water. The massive construction project over the last 14 years has brought in its wake a new town, road infrastructure, a school, and a hospital. Further, 25,000 workers are now equipped to work on more infrastructure projects.
Leading the project was Italy’s Webuild, a company that has completed 30 different projects in Ethiopia over the last 70 years, echoing some of the period and thinking of the famous Enrico Mattei. A number of projects are hydroelectric, including the company’s present work on the Koysha dam, which will become Ethiopia’s second-largest hydroelectric project.
