Text

E-book Dams, Power, and the Politics of Ethiopia's Renaissance

---

Penilaian

---

Fifteen years to the day after making this statement, on 2 April 2011, MelesZenawi laid the foundation stone for what would become the Grand EthiopianRenaissance Dam (GERD), domestically funded and, at 5,150 megawatts (MW)of installed capacity and 74 billion cubic metres of water storage, one of the largestdams in the world. As Turkey had unilaterally built a series of dams upstream onthe transboundary Euphrates,² Ethiopia was to do the same in the face of opposi-tion from downstream Egypt and Sudan on the Blue Nile (see Figure1.1). Beyondthe remarkable coincidence of timing, this quote illustrates a key point that is cen-tral to this book. Namely, rather than a spur-of-the-moment idea in response to thearrival of the Arab Spring in Egypt, as has sometimes been suggested (Fabricius2013;Johnson 2018), the decision to build the GERD was the culmination of verylong-term processes. Ethiopian governments at least as far back as that of EmperorHaile Selassie (1930–1974) had ambitions of damming the Blue Nile. Past regimesmade significant progress in studying the river basin and identifying potentialdam sites. Yet this ambition remained unfulfilled due to Egyptian opposition toupstream development, internal political divisions, and economic weakness inEthiopia, and Ethiopia’s limited strategic importance to the global powers thatmight support such a project. More directly, the GERD was the culmination ofa 20-year project under Meles Zenawi, and the Ethiopian Peoples’ RevolutionaryDemocratic Front (EPRDF) Government that he led, to transform the Ethiopian economy, and in doing so address the political and economic weaknesses that hadprevented past attempts at building a Blue Nile dam. The pursuit of hydroelectricpower was interwoven with the dynamics of political power.This book argues that the Ethiopian dam-building programme, of which theGERD is merely the largest and most controversial project, is symbolic of the suc-cesses and limitations of the EPRDF’s attempts to build a ‘developmental state’and to transform the Ethiopian economy and society.³ Throughout its time inoffice (1991–2019), the EPRDF governed in a context of political vulnerability.The EPRDF was established by leaders from a minority-ethnic group that enjoyedlittle elite or popular support outside their home region of Tigray. Moreover, aseries of political crises in the early 2000s further underscored the threat to theruling elite posed by popular unrest and ethnic divisions. The result was that theEPRDF leadership pursued a project of economic transformation that aimed atbroad-based distribution of access to land, agricultural livelihoods, and indus-trial employment as a means of binding the masses to the regime and therebymaintaining political order (Lavers 2023). For the EPRDF, economic growth andthe structural transformation of the economy were synonymous with the Front’spolitical survival.

---

Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

-

No. Panggil

320.12 LAV d

Penerbit

London : Oxford University Press., 2024

Deskripsi Fisik

337 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9780192871213

Klasifikasi

320.12

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

-

Subjek

Geopolitics

Info Detail Spesifik

-

Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

-

Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

Komentar

---

Anda harus masuk sebelum memberikan komentar