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The Merowe Dam, also known as Merowe High Dam, Merowe Multi-Purpose Hydro Project or Hamdab Dam, is a large dam near Merowe Town in northern Sudan, about north of the capital Khartoum. Its dimensions make it the largest contemporary hydropower project in Africa. It is situated on the river Nile, close to and inundating the 4th Cataract where the river divides into multiple smaller branches with large islands in between. Merowe is a city about downstream from the construction site at Hamdab. The main purpose for building the dam was the generation of electricity. Merowe Dam, Nile River, Republic of Sudan, NASA Earth Observatory
The Sudan military government under Gaafar Nimeiry revived the plan in 1979, now with the intention of producing hydroelectricity for Sudan's rising demand. The following decade saw international industry and planning offices busy, producing a total of four feasibility studies 1. However, insufficient funding and lack of investor interest effectively stalled the project at the planning stage.
This appears to have changed fundamentally since the country started exporting oil in commercial quantities in the years 1999/2000. A greatly improved creditworthiness brought an influx of foreign investment, and the contracts for the construction of what is now known as the Merowe Dam project were signed in 2002 and 2003.
The main contractors are:
By the time the contracts were signed, the Merowe Dam had been the largest international project the Chinese industry ever participated in.
River diversion and work on the concrete dams began in early 2004. The left river channel was closed on 30 December 2005; the project timeline scheduled the reservoir impounding to start in mid-2006 and the first generating unit to go on-line in mid-2007. The dam was inaugurated on March 3, 2009, at which point the reservoir was full and all the hydro-electric generating capacity on-line.
The combined grid-connected generating capacity in Sudan was 728 MW in 2002, about 45% hydroelectricity and 55% oil-fired Power plant. However, the effective capacity has always been a lot lower. The two main facilities, the Sennar (constructed in 1925) and Roseires Dam (1966) dams on the Blue Nile, were originally designed for irrigation purposes rather than Power generation. Generating units were added during the 1960s and 1970s when the demand for electric power increased, but their power production is often heavily restricted by irrigation needs.
The government in Khartoum has announced plans to raise the country's electrification level from an estimated 30% to about 90% in the mid-term. Large investments into the medium and low voltage distribution grids will be necessary but not sufficient to reach this ambitious goal: First and foremost, the foreseeable increase in power consumption would require the addition of generating capacity. During the 1990s, Sudanese electricity customers have already been plagued by frequent power outage due to insufficient generation. Three new thermal power plants went into operation in the Khartoum area in 2004, increasing the installed capacity to 1315 MW. The Merowe dam with its peak output of 1250 MW will almost double this capacity once it comes online.
Though government officials claim there are improved living conditions at the resettlement areas, with relatively modern buildings and infrastructure, affected people reject the compensation plans. Their main objections are:
About 6,000 people were resettled to the Al-Multaqah site in the Nubian Desert during 2003 and 2004. Their villages were the closest to the dam construction site near Hamdab.Terminski, Bogumil (2013). "Development-Induced Displacement and Resettlement: Theoretical Frameworks and Current Challenges", Indiana University, available at: http://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/dlc/handle/10535/8833?show=full According to a survey conducted in early 2005, Irn.org the poverty rate has increased dramatically because the farmers are not able to produce anything saleable in the local markets.
Only the owners of real estate purportedly are covered under the compensation scheme, although reports are that families have been displaced without compensation or adequate provisions for relocation. Nomadic families will not receive any compensation, even though the resettlement of the farming Manasir will deprive them of their Symbiosis. The consequences for their ability to sustain their lives in a harsh environment remains to be assessed.
Kothari announced, "The affected people have claimed that they received no warning that water levels would be raised and that no assistance from Government authorities has been forthcoming since their houses were destroyed." According to reports, the Government of Sudan has not honored its promises to those who have been displaced. Kothari noted that, "thousands of people in the same area were relocated in similar circumstances that left many temporarily without food or shelter, and that some of those people remain homeless today." Kothari called upon the Sudanese government to ensure safety and adequate housing to all those affected by the dams and warned the projects "would lead to large-scale forced evictions and further violence."
Several foreign institutions have been recently or are currently involved in salvage archaeology in the region under the umbrella Merowe Dam Archaeological Salvage Project (MDASP). Among them are ACACIA project University of Cologne, Gdańsk Archaeological Museum Expedition (GAME), Polish Academy of Sciences, Humboldt University of Berlin, the Italian Institute for Africa and the Orient (IsIAO), the University College London, the Sudan Archaeological Research Society, the Hungarian Meroe Foundation, University of California at Santa Barbara - Arizona State University consortium, and the Oriental Institute Museum of the University of Chicago.
Their main problems are the shortness of the remaining time and limited funding. Unlike the large UNESCO campaign conducted in Egypt before the completion of the Aswan High Dam, when more than a thousand archaeological sites could be documented and Abu Simbel to prevent them from drowning in Lake Nasser floods, work at the 4th cataract is much more restricted.
Since 2006, the archaeologists working for the Merowe Dam Archaeological Salvage Project became accused by environmental and human rights activists as well as the representatives of the affected people of facilitating the political legitimatization of the project. The archaeologists working for the dam project found themselves in an ethical dilemma since they were undertaking salvage excavations while the local people were in opposition to the building of the dam that necessitates both their resettlement and the archaeological campaign.
Historian Runoko Rashidi issued a statement in solidarity with Sudanese Nubians protesting the dams and called for a halt to their construction.
As Sudan now pushes forward to make use of its water allotment, those countries have begun to call for a revision of the treaty, arguing that—with the exception of Ethiopia—they had all been under colonial rule at the time the negotiations took place, and had not been represented in their best interest. Moreover, the decision of distribution of water was made without any negotiations with Ethiopia, which had rejected the agreement and is the source of 90% of the water and 96% of transported sediment of the Nile.Marshall et al., , 2006Daniel Kendie, The Five Dimensions of the Eritrean Conflict 1941–2004: Deciphering the Geo-Political Puzzle. United States of America: Signature Book Printing, Inc., 2005, pp.198.
During the Sudanese civil war (2023–present) on 13 January 2025, the dam's power station was damaged by RSF drones, causing a fire at the facility and damaging a key transformer. The attack also caused power outages as far as Shendi, Port Sudan, Atbara and Omdurman.
Archaeology
The fertile Nile valley has been attracting human settlement for thousands of years. The section between the 4th and 5th cataract—a significant portion of which will be inundated by the reservoir lake—has been densely populated through nearly all periods of (pre)history, but very little Archaeology work has ever been conducted in this particular region. Recent surveys have confirmed the richness and diversity of traceable remains, from the Stone Age to the Islamic period.
Political impact
International
Usage rights to the waters of the Nile are fixed in the Nile Waters Treaty, negotiated by the British Empire in 1959. It allots 82 percent of the water volume to Egypt, while Sudan is granted the rights to the remaining 18 percent. None of the riparian countries further upstream in the Nile basin—Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya and Tanzania—are entitled to any significant use of the water, be it for irrigation (of particular interest to Ethiopia and Kenya) or hydropower (Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda).
Domestic
While a peace treaty appears to have stopped the fighting in South Sudan after almost 20 years, there is no end in sight yet for the Darfur conflict. More recently, unrest in Nubia as a direct result of the dams and the forced permanent displacement of Nubians from their homelands threatens to erupt into war. A group calling itself the Nubian Liberation Front is threatening armed resistance in order to thwart the series of dams along the Nile, and particularly at Kajbar.
Environmental impact
Health
The resettlement area is a vast area with an expected 50,000–70,000 inhabitants who would be going through a transitional period for a few years before the get acclimatised and psychologically adapted to their new life. Governing by the two eminent health impact experiences of New Halfa resettlement projects and Aswan Dam in Egypt, strategic health planning ought to start early to foresee what water born diseases and other ecological health problems (such as bilharziasis, malaria) are likely to prevail and to plan how to guard against that.
Evaporation
The creation of the reservoir lake will increase the surface area of the Nile by about 700 km2. Under the climatic conditions at the site, additional evaporation losses of up to 1,500,000,000 m3 per year can be expected. This corresponds to about 8% of the total amount of water allocated to Sudan in the Nile Waters Treaty.
See also
External links
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