The Gilgel Gibe III Dam is a 246 m high roller-compacted concrete dam with an associated hydroelectric power plant on the Omo River in Ethiopia. It is located about west of Sodo in the South Ethiopia Regional State. At the time of its full commissioning the dam was the third largest hydroelectric plant in Africa with a power output of about 1,870 Megawatt (MW), thus more than doubling Ethiopia's total installed capacity from its 2007 level of 814 MW.Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation:Gibe III Hydroelectric Project Official Website , accessed on May 7, 2012Energy Information Administration: Ethiopia Energy Profile , accessed on October 27, 2009 The Gibe III dam is part of the Gibe cascade, a series of dams including the existing Gibe I dam (184 MW) and Gibe II power station (420 MW) as well as the planned Gibe IV (1,472 MW) and Gibe V (560 MW) dams. The existing dams are owned and operated by the state-owned Ethiopian Electric Power, which is also the client for the Gibe III Dam.
The US$1.8 billion project began in 2006, electricity generation started in October 2015. The remaining generators were operational by 2016. The project has experienced serious delays; in May 2012, full commissioning had been scheduled for June 2013.Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation:Gibe III Hydroelectric Project Official Website , accessed in May 2012 The dam was inaugurated by Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn on 17 December 2016.
Local and international environmental groups forecast major negative environmental and social impacts of the dam and criticized the project's environmental and social impact assessment as insufficient. Because of this and accusations that the entire approval process for the project was suspect,BBC News:The dam that divides Ethiopians, March 26, 2009, accessed on October 17, 2009 funding for the full construction cost was not secured, as the African Development Bank delayed a decision about a loan pending a review of the dam's environmental impact by its compliance review and mediation unit. This dates back to August 2009 when they accepted a call from NGOs for such a review.Ethiofact.com:AfDB to probe Ethiopian dam project, 4 August 2009, accessed on December 20, 2009 In August 2010 Ethiopian prime minister Meles Zenawi vowed to complete the dam "at any cost", saying the dam's critics "don’t want to see Africa developed; they want us to remain undeveloped and backward to serve their tourists as a museum."News Business Ethiopia:Meles Vows to Complete Gibe III Dam at Any Cost, 11 August 2010, accessed on 18 September 2010
Design The Gilgel Gibe III Dam is and high roller-compacted concrete dam. It withholds a reservoir capacity of and a surface area of , collected from a catchment area of . The reservoir's live (active or "useful") storage is and dead storage of . The normal operating level of the reservoir is above sea level with a maximum of and a minimum of . The dam's spillway is long and floodgate-controlled with a maximum discharge capacity of . Water above above sea level can be discharged through its gates. Feeding the dam's power house are two penstocks that each branch into five separate tunnels for each individual turbine. The power house contains ten 187 MW generators supported by Francis turbines for a total installed capacity of 1,870 MW.
The initial design of the dam foresaw a rock-fill dam. However, due to difficulties with obtaining proper and sufficient insurance coverage for the rock-fill dam, the design was changed to roller-compacted concrete.
Benefits The main benefit of the dam is electricity generation that is both renewable and dispatchable. It was forecast to supply about half of its power to Ethiopia and export the other half to Kenya (500 MW), Sudan (200 MW) and Djibouti (200 MW)."Ethiopia, Italian Company Sign $2 Billion Hydro Power Project" (All Africa), subscription required; accessed 21 July 2006 However, there were long delays in making Power Purchase Agreements. Only Kenya signed a Memorandum of Understanding to purchase electricity from the dam. Financing for a transmission line to Kenya was approved by the World Bank in July 2012.
Access to the electricity grid in Ethiopia currently is very low. Less than 2% of Ethiopia's rural population, which accounts for 85% of the total population, have access to the grid. With the support of the World Bank the government is carrying out an ambitious project to expand rural electricity access.Ethiopia Electric Agency:Ethiopia Energy Access Project, accessed on October 17, 2009 In 2003, low generation capacity combined with a severe drought caused power cuts lasting 15 hours twice a week for a period of six months, costing an estimated $200 million in economic output. In 2008 and 2009, Ethiopia again experienced power cuts and brownouts. According to the International Rivers Network the power cuts were caused by drought, because almost all electricity generation in Ethiopia is hydroelectric. According to the same source, despite an increase in access to the electric grid, electricity consumption is likely to remain low for the foreseeable future due to the prevailing level of poverty. Even without the Gibe III hydro plant, according to one source, Ethiopia had a surplus installed capacity of 400 megawatts.Allafrica.com:Ethiopia: AfDB Set to Start Funding Country's Gibe Dam, July 3, 2009, accessed on December 20, 2009 Under Ethiopia's current development plans it is said the country will be more than 95% dependent on hydroelectric power. Ethiopia has predicted that electricity exports will generate around $407 million revenue per year, exceeding the value of the country's next most valuable export, coffee.
A secondary benefit of the project is flood protection. In 2006, a flood claimed the lives of at least 360 people and thousands of livestock in the lower Omo River basin. A further benefit is the reduction in the impact of droughts,Seleshi Bekele and Jonathan Lautze:Blowback:Ethiopia's Gibe III dam: a balanced assessment, Los Angeles Times, accessed on May 7, 2012 including through large state-owned irrigated sugar plantations.
Controversy The project is controversial because of its environmental and social impact, the magnitude of which in itself is a subject of controversy; because of the award of the construction contract without competitive bidding; and because of an alleged lack of transparency in project affairs. For example, the environmental and social impact assessment was not published until two years after construction began. The assessment suggested that the project would cause minimal problems environmentally and socially. However, critics consider it to be flawed both in terms of thoroughness and objectivity. Among these critics is the African Resources Working Group who released statements saying that "The quantitative [and qualitative] data included in virtually all major sections of the report were clearly selected for their consistence with the predetermined objective of validating the completion of the Gibe III hydro-dam" and that despite claims made by the government to the contrary, the dam would "produce a broad range of negative effects, some of which would be catastrophic." Another prominent critic of the dam is the Kenyan paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey who said that "the project is fatally flawed in terms of its logic, in terms of its thoroughness, in terms of its conclusions".Richard Leakey:The Gibe III dam must be stopped, March 26, 2009
In June 2011 UNESCO's World Heritage Committee, in its 35th session held in Paris, France, called for the construction of the dam to be halted, to submit all assessments of the dam and requested Ethiopia and Kenya to invite a World Heritage Centre/IUCN monitoring mission to review the dam's impact on Lake Turkana, a World Heritage Site.
Environmental and social impact According to the Ethiopian authorities, once the dam has been built the total amount of water flowing into the lake will not change. The only difference would be a more stable flow over the year - more during the dry season, and less during the wet. Ethiopian prime minister Meles Zenawi said in a BBC interview: "The overall environmental impact of the project is highly beneficial. It increases the amount of water in the river system, it completely regulates flooding, which was a major problem, it improves the livelihood of people downstream because they will have irrigation projects, and it does not in any way negatively affect the Turkana Lake. This is what our studies show."Ethiopian President Meles Zenawi in a BBC interview, March 2009, Minutes 4:25 to 5:10
According to critics, the dam will be potentially devastating to the indigenous population.African Resources Working Group:A Commentary on the Environmental, Socioeconomic and Human Rights Impacts of the Proposed Gibe III Hydrodam in the Lower Omo River Basin of Southwest Ethiopia, January 2009, accessed on October 17, 2009 The dam will stop the seasonal flood, which will impact the lower reach of the Omo River and Lake Turkana as well as the people who rely on these ecosystems for their livelihoods. According to Terri Hathaway, director of International Rivers' Africa programme, Gibe III is "the most destructive dam under construction in Africa." The project would condemn "half a million of the region's most vulnerable people to hunger and conflict."BBC:Web campaign against Ethiopia Gibe III dam, 23 March 2010
Impact on the livelihoods of the inhabitants of the lower Omo River Valley
It is estimated that more than 200,000 people rely on the Omo River below the dam for some form of subsistence such as flood recession agriculture, and many of these ethnic groups live in chronic hunger. Critics state that the Gibe III dam may worsen their situation. Indigenous people rely on recessional cultivation of food along the riverbanks, as well as livestock herding, for survival. The Gibe III dam and the associated decrease in water levels and seasonality of flows in the Omo River threaten the continuation of the only two options for survival in this arid environment—there are no alternatives. The people living in the project area are part of the Southern Nations of Ethiopia, a highly diverse group of people. Ethnic groups affected by the dam include eight distinct indigenous communities: the Mursi, Bodi (Mekan), Muguji (Kwegu), Kara (Karo), Hamer, Bashada, Nyangatom and Daasanach.International Rivers Network:Ethiopia’s Gibe 3 Dam: Sowing Hunger and Conflict , May 2009, accessed on October 17, 2009
Stephen Corry, Director of the indigenous rights organization Survival International said, "The Gibe III dam will be a disaster of cataclysmic proportions for the tribes of the Omo valley. Their land and livelihoods will be destroyed, yet few have any idea what lies ahead. The government has violated Ethiopia’s constitution and international law in the procurement process. No respectable outside body should be funding this atrocious project." Other sources note that, when interviewed, people in many villages have never even heard of the Gibe III dam, and many of them did not even know what a dam was. This is an indication of the failure of consultations and informed consent for the indigenous populations. Survival, together with the Campaign for the Reform of the World Bank, Counter Balance coalition, Friends of Lake Turkana and International Rivers have launched a petition to stop the dam.Survival International:Giant dam to devastate 200,000 tribal people in Ethiopia, 23 March 2010