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ADDIS ABABA: Fanuse Adete is among those Ethiopians looking forward to finally getting connected to the national electricity grid when the Grand Renaissance Dam, which will be inaugurated Tuesday, becomes fully operational.
The 38-year-old widowed mother of seven, who lives in the Menabichu district just 10 kilometers (6 miles) outside the capital, Addis Ababa, currently survives on kerosene lamps and candles to light up her mud-walled hut at night.
“Previously, our daily lives relied on kerosene lamps and charcoal, which posed significant challenges. We would transport firewood to the market, selling it to buy kerosene and bread for our children. However, with the completion of the dam, our entire community is now happy,” she said, while lighting up firewood to make Ethiopian coffee.
Ethiopia will inaugurate the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam along the Blue Nile on Tuesday. It is expected to produce more than 5,000 megawatts, doubling Ethiopia’s current output, part of which will be exported to neighboring countries.
The dam, whose construction began in 2011, has raised concerns from neighboring Egypt and Sudan over the potential reduction of water levels downstream.
Despite the formation of a joint panel to discuss the sharing of the Blue Nile water, tensions remain high and some, like Egypt, have termed the move a security risk, saying it could lead to drought downstream.
But Ethiopia insists that the towering dam will not only benefit its more than 100 million people, but also its neighbors, and sees it as an opportunity to become Africa’s leading electricity exporter.
Ethiopian Water Minister Habtamu Itefa said his country has no intention of harming any of the neighboring countries.
“So the way forward is: let’s work together for more investment. Let’s join hands to propose more projects that can benefit all of us, wherever they may be. This can be scaled up to Nile Basin countries— to Uganda, to Tanzania, to Rwanda, to D.R.C., to South Sudan, to Kenya, to Ethiopia, to Egypt as well,” he said.
Water experts in downstream Egypt say the dam has reduced the amount of water the country receives, and the government had to come up with short-term solutions such as reducing annual consumption and recycling irrigation water.
“Egypt was able to overcome this shortage through Egypt’s High Dam, which has a water reserve that is used to replace what was lost due to the GERD. But we can’t always rely on this reserve for water supply,” said Abbas Sharaky, a professor of geology and water resources at Cairo University.
Sudanese experts say seasonal flooding has decreased during the dam’s filling, but they warn that uncoordinated water releases could lead to sudden flooding or extended dry periods.
But Itefa said that so far, the water levels recorded downstream during the dry season were “three to four-fold what they used to get before the dam.”
“This means, at the expense of the dam we built, they can have their irrigation land. Three to four-fold, they can increase that, because we are providing more water during the dry months. It is a blessing for them,” said the minister.
Yacob Arsano, who teaches hydro politics in the Nile Basin at Addis Ababa University, said Ethiopia was “very careful” with the design and planning of the dam to ensure water flows downstream throughout the year.
“Egypt continues to receive the water. Ethiopia continues to send water. So that is the remaining fact and for which how to organize such a shared use of water resources depends on the two sides. All of the upstream and downstream countries need to sit down properly and soberly,” he said.
For Ethiopians, the prospect of increased electricity supply to enhance development is welcome news. Amakelech Debalke Gebre-Giorgis, a mother of two in Addis Ababa, is looking forward to it.
“We want to see more development, and we want to see more electricity become part of our daily life, and we’re all excited,” said the mother of two.

GULU: Every evening, Everlyn Ayo left her village in northern Uganda, trekking with thousands of other children known as “night commuters” hoping to escape the horrors of Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army.
The messianic Kony, whose case is finally being heard by the International Crime Court (ICC) from Tuesday, led one of the world’s most barbaric insurgencies, massacring and mutilating tens of thousands of people across the region, kidnapping children and turning them into child soldiers and sexual slaves.
Ayo saw the brutality first hand when Kony’s forces attacked her school in Nwoya district when she was around five years old.
“The rebels raided the school, killed and cooked our teachers in big drums and we were forced to eat their remains,” she told AFP from her home in the nearby city of Gulu.
Twenty years ago, Kony became the first person ever issued with an arrest warrant by the ICC, though his war crimes hearing will be in absentia since he has never been caught.
Ayo, now 39, will be among those following the case on her radio, thousands of miles from the sterile courtroom in The Hague.
After her school was attacked, Ayo’s family sent her to relatives in a remote village.
But that was also considered dangerous, and so she became a so-called night commuter, one of the emblematic features of a conflict that raged through much of the 1990s and 2000s.
Every night, she would walk around five kilometers, joining thousands of other children trekking through forests and jungle to stay in towns or shelters where they hoped there was less risk of being kidnapped by Kony’s army.
“We would leave the villages at 4:00 p.m. because the distances were long and we feared the villages at night. In the morning, we had to wait for daylight at around 8:00 am to return,” Ayo said.
The shelters were sporadically guarded by government troops, though they would often abandon their posts, themselves fearful of Kony’s fanatical forces.
“We were so many children that even if you did not cover yourself at night, you did not feel cold because we were squeezed together,” Ayo recalled.
Each morning, after walking for hours, they would find new horrors.
“Many times, on our return to the village, we would find blood-soaked dead bodies. Seeing all that blood as a child traumatized my eyes.
“For many years now, I do not see well, all I see is blood.”
Wilfred Lalobo, 60, showed AFP a monument built in Lukodi, just outside Gulu, for 69 people killed in an attack by Kony’s forces on May 19, 2004.
“When the rebels arrived, the government troops were few, and they fled,” he said.
“Then they started killing civilians. Some people were stabbed with bayonet, others hacked and the rest burned alive in their houses.”
“On that day, my four-year-old daughter, Akello Lalobo was among those killed. My brother’s wife and six other relatives of mine were also killed,” Lalobo added.
Kony’s trial will be closely followed here, particularly by those who have sought to rebuild the region’s many shattered lives.
Stella Angel Lanam was 10 when she was captured by the LRA, which indoctrinated her into becoming a child soldier. She spent nine years in captivity.
Now 38, she is director of the War Victims and Children Networking Initiative, which offers counselling, training and other support in the region.
Lanam said the trial was a comfort, offering some justice to Kony’s many victims.
“Even though we have passed through a lot, we cannot lose hope,” she said.
“Will the government or Kony repair me back to the way I was? No. But at least I will get justice.”
Ayo worries that the world has too quickly forgotten the extreme trauma suffered at the hands of Kony’s forces.
She hopes he will one day see real justice.
“Joseph Kony should be punished severely in a way that the world will never forget,” Ayo said.