Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam: Africa’s largest hydroelectric project Comes True

September 9, 2025 marks a historic date for Ethiopia and for the entire African continent. After years of work, GERD, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, has been handed over to the Ethiopian government and to Ethiopian Electric Power (EPP), the public company responsible for the production and transmission of electricity in the country.

The project is not only an infrastructure but the symbol of a national dream, a technical challenge without precedent that even required the diversion of the Blue Nile to enable construction of the largest African hydroelectric project.

Inaugurating the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam project therefore means inaugurating a new era of energy independence, industrial development, and modernization in a continent that still struggles with lack of access to electricity. A delay that Ethiopia is trying to make up for this delay with a visionary policy that chose to invest in large dams and hydroelectric project to ensure clean hydroelectric energy for the country.

That path, begun many years ago, now reaches with GERD one of its historic milestones, allowing the country to become a regional energy hub.

Even before its impact in terms of hydroelectric energy produced, the grandeur of GERD lies in its size and complexity.

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam project consists of two large dams:

– The main one, 170 meters high, 1,800 meters long at the crest, is a roller-compacted concrete (RCC) gravity dam, built with 10.7 million cubic meters of material.
– The saddle hydroelectric dam is 5 kilometers long and 50 meters high. Built in rockfill with a concrete facing, it has an arched shape similar to a crescent moon set among the Ethiopian hills, playing a fundamental role: closing a natural depression on the left side of the basin to prevent the downstream loss of the Blue Nile’s waters.

The two Ethiopian dams have created a huge artificial reservoir, 172 kilometers long, covering 1,875 square kilometers, with a capacity of 74 billion cubic meters of water. A reservoir that powers the turbines, regulates flows, reduces the risk of floods, and mitigates the effects of recurring droughts.

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam’s true mission is to produce hydroelectric energy. At the base of the main dam, on both banks of the Nile, two hydroelectric power plants have been built.

Together, the plants house 13 francis turbines, for an installed capacity of 5,150 MW and an estimated annual production of 15,700 GWh. The first hydroelectric power turbines entered operation back in 2022, when the reservoir had not yet been fully filled.

Full operation of the hydroelectric project and its hydroelectric turbines now allows Ethiopia to double the country’s electricity production, enabling not only domestic demand to be met but also energy exports to Sudan, Djibouti, Kenya, and Tanzania. A prospect that strengthens the country’s geopolitical role and consolidates its energy independence.

If on the surface the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam appears as a colossus of concrete, inside it houses cutting-edge technologies. A network of tunnels runs beneath the main dam, hosting sophisticated monitoring instruments.

Sensors and pendulums record even the smallest movement of the structure, monitoring joint tightness, water pressure, and stress on the concrete blocks. The data are collected in real time and analyzed in a technological headquarters, the Engineering Building, at the foot of the dam.

It’s worth remembering that the concrete mix, which was placed using the roller-compacted concrete technique and is the result of years of research, was tested in a laboratory that certified its reactions to water, improving quality and safety.

GERD was built by the Webuild Group, which has been present in Ethiopia for 70 years and has led a series of projects that have contributed to the country’s development. To date, the Group has completed 30 major works in the country, almost all in the hydroelectric power sector.

Among these, in addition to the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam project, is the Gibe system, consisting of three dams built on the Omo River, the last of which (Gibe III) is still one of Ethiopia’s most important dams, capable, at the time of its inauguration, of increasing the country’s energy production by 85%.

On the Omo River, Webuild is today building the Koysha project, Ethiopia’s second largest hydroelectric project after GERD, with a dam also in RCC, 190 meters high and 1 kilometer long at the crest. Once filled, its reservoir will reach six billion cubic meters, while its six francis turbines will each provide 300 MW for a total capacity of 1,800 MW.

Once operational, the hydroelectric project will significantly contribute to Ethiopia’s goal of increasing the country’s generation capacity from 5,300 MW in 2024 to over 17,000 by 2037.

Both GERD and the Koysha plant as well as other major projects constructed in the past, are the result of long-term vision and represent the new frontier of sustainable development for the country, a fundamental step for the continent’s energy transition. A development based on water and, thanks to water, on clean energy.