Part I
July 19, 2021 has been recorded as ‘a historic day’ for Ethiopia because it was the day that the second filling of water of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, GERD, was attained successfully! It was a historic day because it marks the conclusion of one of the most controversial episodes of the construction of the GERD. It is important because it ends with glowing success one of the most crucial objectives of the project without which it would have amounted to a surrender of our rights, a surrender to the claims and expectations of our rivals and enemies. It is important because the GERD has now reached a point of no return for any one of our critics and adversaries. It is a day that our adversaries now know we mean business and cannot be stopped or intimidated by outlandish threats!
The commitment of Ethiopia to fulfill this objective was absolutely indispensable and it had to go through several ‘fighting’ stages along several fronts. It had the diplomatic battle that Egypt and company had unraveled against us; it had the political battle both at home and abroad, from fighting the terrorist group in the north, to the smear campaign that various international media outlets have been disseminating to discredit the efforts of Ethiopians to reach a solution in both the law enforcement campaign in the north as well as in the tangible progress on the flagship GERD project. It had to fight against the continuous disinformation campaign conducted against the country and its leadership by all sorts of elements that want to see Ethiopia weakened and possibly disintegrated, let alone allow it attain such a major development, future oriented project as GERD reach a turning point.
In fact, few people were convinced that Ethiopia would cross this threshold so early. The first filling of the Dam was considered equally a huge objective because it was part of the construction, part and parcel of the project. Any failures to attain these landmarks would undermine the country’s capacity to go ahead and reach the final objective of availing energy to millions!
As the propaganda campaign and all sorts of diplomatic battles that enemies of Ethiopia have been conducting intensified including difficult to imagine or explain threats and intimidations, Ethiopians continued to sustain and collect the funds for the GERD while the engineers and other staff progressed with the works. Hence, when finally, amid all these controversies and animosities over the legitimate rights of using one’s resources, amid efforts aimed at pulling nationals out of dire poverty, the successful second filling of the GERD must be celebrated as a true and significant landmark. It must be celebrated as the beginning of a new era, a new chapter in the history of the region, and in the history of the River Nile. Finally the water is now bound to begin to serve its people and not be limited to creating earthly paradise in Sudan and Egypt leaving its native compatriots in thirst and darkness!
It may look easy and without challenges, but the likes of Professor Yacob Arsano, the Dina Muftis, the Engineers Sileshi Bekele and all others among those who were part of the negotiating and construction teams know what sorts of challenges they had to go through to achieve this landmark objective. That was why when the water was overflowing the dam crossing the threshold of the newly upgraded level, the Minister of Water, Irrigation and Energy was seen live on EBC, the official television channel of the country, in a celebrative mood and congratulated Ethiopians and friends of Ethiopia on the attainment of this extremely important objective.
An ecstatic Engineer Sileshi and all other officials of the government were observed on ETV one by one expressing their heartfelt joy over this achievement, over this important historical chapter written on this day July 19, 2021. Equally the country’s head of state and the premier were among those who sent messages of congratulations to the people of Ethiopia. Abay was finally to serve its people while continuing to be a source of life in downstream countries.
There was no excessive triumphalism in the tone of any of the protagonists of this success but the need to underline that Ethiopia was not intent upon doing any wrong over others or not overstepping its legitimate boundaries but has simply tried to use its resource in the best possible manner with never missing the bigger picture of the need to live in peace and harmony with all riparian countries including all the Nile Basin nations. The only policy to follow is the path of harmony and peace the path of partnership because in the end Ethiopia knows that the GERD is one means of regional integration rather than be a pawn of contention and dispute.
It is evident that Ethiopia may be a poor country with limited clouts in the international arena, but its citizens have risen up to the challenge of raising all the funds necessary to build the dam stifling the sabotage international financial institutions have continued to carry out against the legitimate aspirations and rights of Ethiopians to come out of darkness and poverty as have Egypt and Sudan.
Using the resources of the Nile in exclusion of the real owner of the resource, they have built several dams disregarding the concerns of Ethiopia which should have been at least consulted in the processes if not asked for authorisation! Finally the days of justice have come, and the voice of 110 million Ethiopians was heard loud and clear with this announcement of the important statement: Ethiopia has succeeded in the second round filling of the dam on this day showing to the world live that the water continues to flow both when the filling was underway as well as when it was all complete.
Abay is a phenomenal resource that cannot be the property of a single nation or country. Wherever it flows it brings bounty and happiness if used intelligently and with wisdom. Abay is not the exclusive property of any nation whether they are upstream or downstream countries. Ethiopia is the origin of Abay and it has the right to use its bounties for its nationals’ livelihood. It is obliged to do that for the good of its people. Ethiopia is here to stay and Ethiopians have the right to make legitimate and equitable use of the Nile waters which emerges in their own ancestral land they kept free and sovereign with all the sacrifices of the world! The attachment Ethiopians have over their natural bounties cannot be measured easily and it is their expression of sovereignty and dignity nothing less, nothing more.
The world must now acknowledge that there are no more excuses to deprive Ethiopians of what mother nature has endowed it with. The famous narratives of Egypt that the ‘Nile is an exclusive property of Egypt’ and that ‘no one can use a drop of it’ can only belong to history books and may not be a source of pride if not shame and embarrassment. How can a country have the claim of ‘owning’ a river that originates in another land and maintain that no other nation can make use of it including the very native land of the river?! This is hard to understand and even harder to justify! It has never been heard in history that a nation takes full control of the resources of another nation in monopoly and rely on all sorts of pretcxts including colonial one sided treaties with no relevance to the real owner of the resource. History of course will judge all the injustices that Ethiopians had to go through to develop their own resources to pull themselves out of darkness and thirst!
Doubtless this GERD project on the mighty river Nile has passed several delicate and sensitive stages but in a way this filling of the dam has sealed the success of Ethiopians’ ambition to come out of darkness and join the twenty first century. The Ethiopian government has tried to explain to the downstream countries about the real intentions of this project and that as too many Ethiopians live in darkness; millions have no potable water while the civilized world with much less resources and natural gift enjoys better services and facilities, there is no way that this state of affairs can continue forever!
Historically, Ethiopians may not have been blessed with a government of their choice and what is called democracy may be at its primordial stage, but they do know that they have the natural resources that the Creator has gifted them with and that sooner or later they can use them. They know that they have immense natural resources that could be easily exploited and used to extricate people out of the current dire poverty. They however have always lacked a government that could take these factors in to workable program and implement them tangibly on the ground. They needed a guidance that was capable of harnessing all the resources of the people and land and translate that into development, progress and prosperity.
Energy is a basic ingredient or input to any form of development and as a locomotive of progress the country needed power and energy and with all the resources it had it was not possible to bring about the necessary power available to the industrial expansion the country wanted to engage in. Tens of projects have been interrupted or slowed due to scarcity of power; the emerging industrial parks have been producing to very low levels of their potential due to shortage of power!
Millions of Ethiopians’ homes are dark in the evening and even in the the major cities there are continuous interruptions of power due to several challenges not least related to the capacity of generating power besides the lack of basic infrastructure. And yet the country enjoys immense potential and there needed some courage, some ambition and some resolve to embark on such a megaproject such as the GERD.
Ethiopia’s blessings needed to be put to use. Its natural gifts needed to be harnessed. Unfortunately there was little willingness or commitment on the part of successive governments to engage in activities that would benefit the public exploiting these resources appropriately. It needed a leadership with vision and well studied strategy. Although it would be unfair to deprive the previous leaders to the current one of the credit to initiate this project, it should however be also noted that the project was later on unfortunately ‘hijacked’ by corrupt authorities and made to be a source of continuous veiled income for their coffers rather than carry out the construction with full steam and enthusiasm and sense of purpose.
None of the objectives and timetables were seen respected while pretexts after pretexts were presented to hide the failures and promote continuous exploitation of the project to enrich the private bank accounts of a small corrupt clique tied along family and party lines. Eventually, the real intentions of the former leadership were to be unveiled by subsequent pronouncements made by the leaders. It is really sad to see that similar occurrences must take place under every body’s watch. The GERD was to be an ivory tower hanging high up in the sky and this never filling coffer will continue to erode the riches of every family in the form of contribution! In short it was the milk giving cow ready to be exploited for ages without ever seeing the light of day!
BY FITSUM GETACHEW
The Ethiopian Herald 22 July 2021
