How the great dam in Ethiopia challenges Africa

Ethiopia official inauguration of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.[Courtesy]

This past week heads of state from the region gathered in Ethiopia to witness official inauguration of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). The dam is among top 20 largest dams in the world with capacity to generate over 5 gigawatts.

The dam will allow Ethiopia control the flow of the Blue Nile, irrigate land, cultivate fisheries sector, and generate cheap power for its economy and neighbours. Kenya and Tanzania already have infrastructure in place to import electricity from Ethiopia.

To crown it all, GERD was largely constructed by Ethiopians – from ideation, to design, to financing, to execution. By all estimates, the dam is a significant achievement for Ethiopians and will be celebrated for years.

The success of GERD is also a reminder of the dearth of major national projects in the region. This raises the question; why governments in the region have not executed projects of similar scale and importance recently.

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There are two possible answers. The first is the problem of coordination. To execute a project like GERD requires a fair amount of coordination and consistency often lacking in the region.

The lack of ability to coordinate behaviour of both elites and non-elites makes it hard to get the project off the ground. Funds get stolen. People refuse to contribute.

Different critical parts of the construction projects fall behind. In other words, one cannot execute a complex project of GERD’s magnitude without the ability to coordinate lots of key people inside and outside of government.

How did Ethiopia pull this off despite not being famous for political stability? The simple answer is under the leadership of Meles Zenawi the country developed a strong developmentalist state with requisite capacity to coordinate behaviour at scale, despite the ongoing challenges in different parts of the country.

The second problem is related to the question of whether a country has the requisite technical engineering capacity.

The sad reality is despite rising education achievement in the region, our countries have long lost their ability to produce lots of engineers annually. The lack of engineering talent makes the few available very expensive.

And the small numbers diminish potential network effects. This is not to say Ethiopia was overflowing with engineering talent. Their success lies in the fact that they had capacity to overcome their lack of engineering talent.

In other words, if you do not have homegrown talent, you better have the capacity to discern your limitations and acquire the right talent from overseas.

These two factors, the ability to coordinate and the existence of the technical capacity to execute, jointly shape national ambition. If a country does not believe that it can execute complex national projects, there is usually a tendency to not even try.

The resulting equilibrium is that two types of countries emerge – those convinced they can and succeed at complex problems, and those that do not even try. Most countries do not even try.

The writer is a professor at Georgetown University

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