CAIRO — Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has recently announced that his country completed the third filling of the reservoir of its controversial Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) located on the Blue Nile, the main tributary of the Nile River. This move is likely to heighten tensions with the two downstream countries, Sudan and Egypt.

In a ceremony attended by senior Ethiopian officials at the GERD site Aug. 12, Ahmed said in a speech, “Today as you see behind me, the third filling is complete. Compared to last year, we have reached 600 meters [1,968 feet], which is 25 meters [82 feet] higher than the previous filling phase.”

A day earlier, Ahmed gave the green light for the operation of the dam’s second turbine, out of a total of 13 turbines installed at the GERD for the generation of 5,000 megawatts (MW) of electricity. Currently, the two turbines have a capacity to produce 750 MW of electricity.

Kifle Horo, the GERD project manager, said in a speech at the Aug. 11 ceremony launching the operation of the second turbine, “83.3% of the [GERD] project is complete [and] 95% of the civil engineering work is complete.”