About twice its electricity production Ethiopia will start generating power from the Renaissance Dam on Sunday

Ethiopia will start the process of generating power from the controversial Renaissance Dam on the Nile River as of Sunday, and the project, which costs 4.2 billion dollars (3.7 billion euros), aims to produce more than 5,000 megawatts of electricity, more than twice the electricity production of Ethiopia.

Ethiopia will start the process of generating power from the controversial Renaissance Dam on the Nile River from Sunday, government officials announced to Agence France-Presse.

The dam, which is expected to be Africa's largest project to generate electricity from water, has been at the center of a regional dispute since Ethiopia launched the project in 2011.

An Ethiopian government official said, "Tomorrow (Sunday) the first operation of generating electricity from the dam will begin," and another official confirmed this information.

The two officials requested not to be named in the absence of any official announcement in this regard from the Ethiopian authorities.

The downstream countries, Ethiopia's neighbors, Egypt and Sudan, fear the dam's repercussions on their water security, while Addis Ababa stresses its importance for electricity generation and development.

The project, at a cost of 4.2 billion dollars (3.7 billion euros), aims to produce more than 5,000 megawatts of electricity, more than twice that of Ethiopia's electricity production.

Ethiopia was originally planning to produce about 6,500 megawatts before lowering its target.

"The electricity that will be generated from the dam can help revive an economy devastated by the combined factors of a bloody war, high fuel prices and the Covid pandemic," said Addisu Lashitio of the Brookings Institution in Washington.

The Renaissance Dam is located on the Blue Nile, about 30 km from the border with Sudan, and is 1.8 km long and 145 meters high.

The Blue Nile, which originates in Ethiopia, meets the White Nile in Khartoum to form the Nile River, which crosses Sudan and Egypt and flows into the Mediterranean.

No hacking in conversations

Talks held under the auspices of the African Union did not reach a tripartite agreement on the filling and operation of the dam. Cairo and Khartoum demanded that Addis Ababa stop filling the dam's reservoir until an agreement is reached.

However, Ethiopian officials consider filling the dam a natural stage of the dam's construction process and it cannot be stopped.

The Security Council initially discussed the project last July, but Ethiopia, which has long opposed the discussion of the dam issue in the Security Council, considered the council's statement a "unhelpful" deviation from the track led by the African Union.

In September, the Security Council adopted a statement recommending that Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan resume negotiations under the auspices of the African Union.

Egypt adheres to its "historic right" to the waters of the Nile, which is guaranteed by a series of agreements concluded since 1929. At that time, Egypt obtained the right of veto to build any projects on the river.

In 1959, under an agreement with Khartoum on the distribution of Nile waters, Egypt obtained a 66% share of the annual flow of the Nile, compared to 22% for Sudan.

However, Ethiopia is not a party to these agreements and does not consider them legal.

The phase of filling the huge dam reservoir began in 2020, and Ethiopia announced in July of that year that it had reached the goal of filling 4.9 billion cubic meters.

The total capacity of the reservoir is 74 billion cubic meters of water, and the goal in 2021 was to add 13.5 million cubic meters.

Last July, Ethiopia announced that it had reached that goal, which means it would have enough water to start producing energy, although some experts doubted that.

South Africa: a new xenophobic outbreak

They landed in hundreds, angry, for too long without money, without work. Attributing the ills of the country plagued by endemic unemployment to "foreigners", these ordinary South Africans determined to do justice themselves came armed to this center for refugees in Soweto.

The message was clear: "Foreigners, go home". Sithulisiwe Chinora, a 22-year-old Zimbabwean, tells AFP of the fear, her body seized by a terrible tremor, her baby hanging on her back. "I thought that was the day I was going to die," she says.

South Africa is occasionally plagued by xenophobic outbreaks. Sixty-two people were killed in riots in 2008. Violent clashes erupted in 2015, 2016 and again in 2019.

Since January, a movement called "Operation Dudula", which means "repressing" in Zulu, has been gaining momentum. From a few hundred demonstrators again last weekend, the movement rose to 2,000 on Saturday in Johannesburg, noted an AFP journalist.

In the Methodist community center in Soweto, which is home to around 100 migrant families, rumors of a raid had been circulating for a few days. On a Sunday in February, residents saw an armed mob arrive with "sjambok", fearsome traditional Zulu whips made of animal skin, shouting "foreigners are stealing jobs from South Africans".

The gates were not closed in time and the risk of a Molotov cocktail being thrown caused panic among those sheltering in the rooms. Some started crying uncontrollably, others had diarrhea.

Father Paul Verryn, who created the center, affirms it bluntly: "They are xenophobic militants who clearly target foreigners".

"South Africans in South Africa"

In Hillbrow, a deprived area of ​​Johannesburg which has a large population of migrants, 2,000 South Africans carrying national flags and sticks shouted Saturday under the windows of buildings with holed windows, their "fed up with foreigners" .

"We want to take back our country, our space is occupied by foreigners," said Bhekani Thusi, 38. For him, migrants are responsible for drug trafficking, street kids and everything that goes wrong in the country.

The proximity of "Operation Duduala", which claims to be pacifist, with political movements is unclear. The demonstrations indiscriminately bring together members of an organization active during the xenophobic riots called "South Africa first", and veterans of the armed wing of the ANC called Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK, "the spearhead of the Nation"), which recently distanced itself from the historical party in power since its dismantling.

The leader, Nhlanhla Lux Dlamini, an activist in his thirties from Soweto, invariably dressed in military fatigues and bulletproof vest during his public appearances, explained that he wanted to "defend the future of South Africans ". Including going to stores to demand that foreign employees be fired.

"It's the law: all work that does not require special skills belongs to South Africans in South Africa," he reminds anyone who will listen.

The country has 3.95 million foreigners, according to official statistics, out of a population of nearly 60 million. The continent's leading industrial power struggles with 35% unemployment but attracts many African migrants.

"Even if they expelled all the immigrants, it wouldn't change the level of crime, nor that of unemployment", reasons Jay Naidoo, first secretary general of the main trade union center (Cosatu).

So far, the protests have generated tension but not violence. The activists are careful not to cross the red line: "the right to demonstrate is enshrined in the constitution, and for the moment, nothing is criminal", explained a police source to AFP.

EU-AU Summit: towards closer cooperation?

The Brussels summit between the European Union and the African Union and the agreement on the sale of electricity between Ethiopia and Kenya are the contents of this new issue of Business Africa. Also find interviews with San Bilal, EU-Africa expert at the European Center for Development Policy Management and economist Hannah Ryder, Managing Director of Development Reimagined.

Previous EU-Africa summits have resulted in numerous action plans and strategic statements. Twenty-two years have passed since the first summit in Cairo, but bilateral ties have changed little.

At the just-concluded summit in Brussels, the EU announced several support measures for health, pandemic recovery, education and stability , but leaders' cautious optimism Africans was palpable.

The EU has failed to deliver on many past promises and some of the financial commitments announced at the summit have been criticized as merely repackaging initiatives. No agreement was reached on funding fossil fuels or migration. Nevertheless, both parties were keen to stress that this summit was different.

Trade between the EU and Africa shows a huge imbalance and Africa's economic underdevelopment persists. Is a new era in EU-Africa relations on the horizon? San Bilal is an EU-Africa expert at the European Center for Development Policy Management . He explains to us why the EU wants to engage better and differently with Africa.

China, competitor and partner

When the EU did not respond or was slow to respond, Africa, hungry for development finance and infrastructure, courted other partners, notably China.

Over the past two decades, Beijing has become Africa's largest bilateral lender, a major investor and infrastructure financier. Brussels is desperate to regain lost ground.

Hannah Ryder is an economist and managing director of Development Reimagined . She tells us why the European Union has its eyes on China as it seeks to improve its relations with African countries.

Ethiopia and Kenya reach power export deal

With the commissioning of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) , Addis Ababa will produce a surplus of electricity. An agreement has been reached to export some 400 MW per year to Nairobi.

The country is seeking to produce 700 MW from the dam on the Nile as part of a pilot phase. The commissioning of the GERD will increase Ethiopia's power capacity to over 5,500 MW. The World Bank and the African Development Bank have committed funds to construct the transmission line, which is more than 1,000 km long.