In Africa, they don't just build dreams, cathedrals in the desert, or roads that lead nowhere. Sometimes dams are built too. And what dams: in 2011, Ethiopia began work on the largest wall of water on the continent, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which, rather than heralding an Ethiopian “renaissance,” seems to announce a new electrical Middle Ages in which Egypt will be the Ghibelline and Addis Ababa the Guelph.
The promise? More than 6,000 megawatts of electricity from the Blue Nile, the largest hydroelectric power plant in Africa and among the twenty most powerful in the world. Translated: Ethiopia, which until yesterday struggled to light a candelabra in the Orthodox churches of Lalibela, now aims to become the Enel of Africa. Without loans from international banks, without Beijing's help, and above all, denying Trump's claim that “we made a mistake in financing it,” perhaps to assist Cairo. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's denial was as dry as the desert before Aswan. It seems that the dam on display at La Rinascente was paid for out of the pockets of Ethiopians, both those who remained and those who emigrated. A collection of nearly $5 billion that brought the diaspora together: not everyone was able to return home, but at least they were able to turn on the lights.
And nationalism, so in vogue these days, has dusted off flags, caps, banners, and slogans that haven't been seen since the days of Haile Selassie.
The problem is that the Nile is not a mountain stream that flows only through Addis Ababa. It is a matter for 11 countries, two downstream (Egypt and Sudan) and nine upstream, with development priorities that fit together worse than a condominium meeting. And as in any self-respecting condominium, there are acquired rights: Egypt says “the water is mine and no one can touch it,” backed by a 1959 colonial treaty that gave it 66% of the river. Too bad the river reaches Egypt after filling up in the Ethiopian highlands, where 86% of the water comes from. In practice, it's as if the tap were in your house, but your neighbor claimed the entire cistern “because that's what the British decided.”
The Egyptians don't trust this: the Nile is life for them, and without water there is no agriculture, no tourism, and no Cairo with its 20 million inhabitants. That is why they have asked for the dam to be filled slowly, over twenty years, as you would fill a glass of milk when you have a stomach ache. Ethiopia, on the other hand, replied that it could not wait: children need to study in the evening with electric light, not candles.
The result: after years of negotiations, interventions by the African Union, pressure from the United States, and even drama at the UN Security Council, everyone stuck to their guns. Meanwhile, the dam is ready: Addis Ababa inaugurated it on September 9, 2025, and that was that.
Sudan, overwhelmed by a civil war that has reduced the country to a desperate, unsolvable puzzle, views it with suspicion: it fears that the new dam will disrupt its own dams, built when the world was still in black and white.
So here we are: with a dam that promises to save Ethiopians from deforestation, bring internet to villages, and even cool school classrooms in summer. But at the same time, it risks inflaming relations with its most troublesome neighbor, Egypt, which continues to talk about “historic rights” to water as if the Nile were private property complete with a gate and intercom.
The paradox is that, if they collaborated, the dam could help everyone: controlling floods in Sudan and protecting Egypt from droughts. But Africa, as we know, is a land of big dreams and small negotiations. And so the world's longest river remains a liquid battlefield, where everyone is trying to build a dam, not so much against the water as against time, which cannot be turned back.