Ethiopians Around the World to Celebrate GERD on Sunday

 Ethiopians are encouraged to celebrate for three minutes “in any way they like,” said the coordinating committee.

Borkena

August 1, 2020 

Ethiopians around the world are poised to celebrate the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). 

Lift, a private transportation service provider in Ethiopia and the National Coordinating Committee of GERD public participation Council joined hand to put together the event. 

According to state media, Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporate, the event will be celebrated around the world on Sunday, August 2, 2020. 

“Our voice for our dam” is the theme of the campaign. Starting at 4 p.m. local time, Ethiopians and people of Ethiopian origin around the world will celebrate the dam for three minutes, said the organizing committee in Ethiopia. 

Celebration hashtag #Dimstashinlegidbachin Amharic for #ourvoiceforourdam is anticipated to trend among Ethiopians in social media. 

What’s to be celebrated about GERD?

On July 21, Ethiopia announced that it had successfully completed the first stage of filling the dam by taking advantage of the two weeks of heavy rainfall that the country received. 

Egypt insisted that Ethiopia should not start filling the dam before reaching an agreement on the time frames of the filling and measures to be taken in the events of drought which the latter said was unfair saying there is no international law that restricts Ethiopia from using the water in an equitable manner. 

Before the the filing of the first phase of the dam, Ethiopians launched a social media campaign to put pressure on Ethiopian government to fill the dam inundating platforms like Twitter with the hashtag #itismydam and #fillthedam

The dam is expected to start generating power using two turbines as to the year 2021. 

The celebration tomorrow is more about mobilizing the public to complete the dam and support for the diplomatic battle in the course of completing the dam rather than celebrating filling of the first phase of the dam — a stage that retained about 4.9 billion cubic meters of water in the reservoir of the dam. 

The dam will hold about 74 billion cubic meters of water when the filling is completed after the completion of the dam project which is expected to take three more years. 

Over 60 million Ethiopians will get electricity when GERD starts to generate hydroelectric power in full capacity. Ethiopia also intends to use the hydroelectric power generated from GERD as a reliable source of power supply for investors intending to invest in the manufacturing sector.