By Eyasu Zekarias
Despite the instances of drought creeping up in the country, the Ministry of Water and Energy announces that the trajectory of power generation through hydropower has increased.
In 2022/23, Ethiopia generated hydropower for neighboring countries Sudan, Djibouti and Kenya.
According to Eng. Habtamu Itefa (PhD), Minister of Water and Energy, the country in the concluded fiscal year supplied 1.7 million GW hour of electricity, which was an increase of 15 percent over the spread of the past five years.
As the Minister depicted in a recent encounter with media, “This export capacity has increased over the last five years by 15%. In 2019, the export capacity was only about 1 million GW hour, but now the figure is 1.7 million GW hour which is about 15% every year.”
“The energy potential generation capacity that we got this year, could achieve 5.42 GW generation capacity including that of GERD,” revealed Eng. Habtamu.
“Having sufficient water capacity to generate hydropower will make us better than other parts of the neighboring countries,” cited the minister, adding, “The investments made so far in building various electricity lines connecting from Ethiopia to Kenya and Djibouti, will be instrumental in our endeavor.”
When asked about the effect of the drought on hydropower generation, the Minister acknowledged that the drought had caused a drop in rainfall. However, Eng. Habtamu pointed out that, “With regards to water levels of the dam due to insufficient rainfall, the ministry had contingency strategies in place to maintain the water level in the reservoirs so that the generation capacity could not be reduced.”
