Terri Hathaway's blog

In late March, I traveled with Caterina Amicucci

Caterina (CRBM) and Joshua (FoLT) crossing Lake Turkana

(Campaign to Reform the World Bank) and Joshua Angelei (Friends of Lake Turkana) to meet those whose lives would be devastated by the impact of Gibe 3 Dam on Lake Turkana. As our plane descended into Lodwar, Lake Turkana’s biggest town, the landscape was irregularly green – rain had broken the area’s three year drought. But the rains which caused celebrations amongst the communities are increasingly an exception, no longer the historic, seasonal rule. We also found that the rain's respite had not calmed the people’s opposition to Gibe 3 Dam.

Turning the spotlight on Africa's shady dam planning has been a goal of mine since joining International Rivers in July 2004. I'm proud to announce our latest "spotlight" - the 2010 African Dams Briefing, a summary of key public data on Africa's proposed large dams.

The roots of this briefing can be traced

2010 Africa Dams Briefing Map of Proposed Dams (International Rivers)

back to my first day with International Rivers almost six years ago. By the afternoon, I was settling into my new desk reading a memo left by my predecessor, Ryan Hoover. It was a list of proposed dam projects in Africa, the various concerns about each dam, and his estimation of whether or not each project would go forward.

Ryan’s list became a daily reference for sharing what International Rivers knew about any particular dam in Africa being planned behind closed doors. I started expanding the list, adding new dams and updating information. By 2006, the list had turned into a full fledged reference. We published the 18 page briefing, along with a map, to show the significance of proposed dams in Africa. Our dams briefing has been visited over 3,000 times.

Turkana residents protest Gibe 3 Dam, before authorities started cracking down. (Lucas Ng'Asike/The Standard)

The Gibe 3 Dam and Ethiopia's coming elections have something powerful in common: the silencing of dissent at any cost. Ethiopia's government has systematically developed a culture of fear that silences any dissent of the ruling party and its policies. In villages, people fear what they say or do could be reported to officials by their neighbors. 

As Gibe 3 Dam is a priority project of Prime Minister Zenawi's government, anyone seen to be critical of the dam – including project-affected people asserting their legal rights – is seen as an enemy. Up to 63 local associations in South Omo Zone have been suspended, pre-emptively shutting down forums for discussing local issues. The government has denied licenses for community radio stations, and two-way radios are considered contraband. One Ethiopian was arrested for unknowingly wearing a Gibe 3 protest shirt borrowed from a cousin across the Kenyan border. Worse, a translator was reportedly arrested for treason after helping independent researchers communicate with affected communities. Other translators have been harassed and intimidated, helping drive the government's greatest silencing tool: its culture of fear.

“There is no singing and dancing all along the Omo River now. The kids are quiet. We adults go into the shelter and sleep silently. We are too hungry. The big rains have been gone for three years, and now we come to the Omo and there is no water. Go and give this news to your elders, our people are hungry.”

Hungry Kwegu child after the Omo River failed to flood (2009) (anonymous)

These words come from a farmer one month ago on the banks of Ethiopia's Omo River. The Kwegu, Bodi, Nyangatom, Karo, Mursi, Dassanech and other tribes, an estimated 200,000 people, depend on the Omo River floods to grow maize and sorghum, and to replenish grass lands for grazing cattle herds. The river's annual flood is a lifeline for these indigenous tribespeople.

Floodwaters have been small (2007), then smaller (2008), until the Omo's annual flood disappeared altogether in late 2009. The last three years of poor rains combined with the unexplained, decreasing flood has left the people of the Omo River hungry with little or no stored grain. Many farmers have stopped planting all together. Traditional cultivation sites are being abandoned. Last November, four men and two children died of hunger.

Main road in Awassa (Oliver Benson)

It’s been more than a week since anyone has heard from three students kidnapped from the Awassa University campus in southern Ethiopia by government security forces, according to the Human Rights League of the Horn of Africa (HRLHA). Whereabouts of the students, Nagga Gezaw, Dhaba Girre, and Jatani Wario, is still unknown. The students were part of a local movement in southern Ethiopia which has called on their government to address river contamination, unpaid compensation and other problems caused by the Lega Dembi open pit gold mine. Several student-led demonstrations in early December brought promises to address the issues, promises now left empty by the extra-judicial kidnappings. (For more info on the demonstrations, see Addis Fortune and Voice of America.)

Ethiopia announced last week that, faced with a 120 MW deficit, electricity will be cut, 14 hours daily for six days each month. Those lost 84 hours a month will cost the country’s economy 1% of its GDP.

Although Ethiopia has only 767 MW of grid-based electricity, it was more than the country’s demand until last year. Domestic peak demand has reportedly risen 24% since, beyond the national utility’s meager supply.

But Ethiopia’s power company, EEPCo, had every intention that two new hydro plants, Tekeze (300 MW) and Gilgel Gibe II (480 MW), would be supplying power long before now, doubling grid supply and even jumpstarting power exports in 2008. Once operational, both will loom largely over Ethiopia’s current largest power plant, the 184 MW Gilgel Gibe Dam. But technical delays and cost overruns, two characteristics notoriously common in large dams, are now haunting EEPCo.

Exploiting the Inga Rapids could make a lot of money and electricity, but there's a snowball's chance that the people of Democratic Republic of Congo will see much of either....

Matadi Port

From Matadi, the country's main port and capital of Bas Congo Province, we headed towards one of the Congo's great riches: the Inga Rapids. The paved road continued, curving lightly past steep hillsides of brilliant green dropping downward into deep valleys. It was a sight I might expect to see amongst the foothills of the Alps. Below me to the right, the Congo River lay calm and wide. The serenity of the landscape gave no hint of the exploitation, conflict and injustice that have shrouded the country for more than a hundred years.