Ethiopia to build 800m USD dam

Sept 27, 2005 (ADDIS ABABA) — Ethiopian government is planning to build the country’s largest ever multipurpose dam with an investment cost of 800 million dollars, Fortune newspaper reported.

According to the official Ethiopian New Agency, (ENA) this multipurpose dam is part of a series of dams to be built in the next few years. The project is a result of an agreement signed in 2001 between Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt.

Sudan and Egypt will bear some of the cost of the construction of the dam, to be built at the border between the Amhara and Oromia regional states at a place called Kara Dobe.

The project owned by the Ministry of Water Resources far supersedes another of same ownership which is in the pipeline at the Kessem river in the Upper Awash basin in the Afar regional state.

Nor Consult and Nor Plan of Norway, Lamayor of Germany, and Water Works Design and Supervising Enterprise (WWDSE) as well as Shebele Consultant from Ethiopia are expected to complete the pre-feasibility study for the Kara Dobe Dam, 60km west of the Abay Bridge at Dejen, by the middle of 2006.

Once the study is completed, the Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation (EEPCo) will takeover from the Ministry to undertake the actual construction.

Experts say Ethiopia is believed to have a potential to generate 38,000 megga watt electric power from hydroelectric dams, according to Fortune’s report.

(ENA/ST)