Biruk Mekonnen, Ambassador of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia to the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, describes a celebration not only of engineering, but of solidarity

THE Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) was never just a national project. From the start, it was imagined as a continental statement — one built on African resources, African resolve, and African ambition. 

That Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam vision came into sharper focus this past week, when Ethiopia officially marked the launch of GERD in the presence of leaders from across Africa, the Caribbean, and beyond. It was a celebration not only of engineering, but of solidarity — a moment that gave physical form to the ideals of Pan-Africanism and South-South cooperation.

Ethiopia’s message together we will prevail

When Ethiopia first broke ground on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam more than a decade ago, it did so without financial support from global banks or the backing of financial powers. Faced with indifference and doubt, Ethiopians turned inward, rallied together, and looked to each other.

Together, we can turn our challenges into opportunities for peace, stability, and growth. From civil servants to shopkeepers, farmers to university students, millions of Ethiopians contributed what they could. Some gave a month’s salary. Others bought bonds in small amounts. In the end, a nation financed its dream with its own hands, hearts, and hard-earned birr.

Today, GERD stands as the largest hydropower project in Africa and one of the few major infrastructural achievements in the Global South built without external debt. But to describe GERD only in terms of megawatts and machinery is to miss its greater meaning. The dam is, in the words of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, “a symbol of resilience of the past and hope for the future.”

It is also a symbol of trust — in ourselves, in our continent, and in the principle that African problems are best addressed through African solutions.

A Pan-African Project

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam may be built on Ethiopian soil, but it is rooted in Pan-African ideals. When Ethiopia invited the African Union — and only the African Union — to mediate negotiations with downstream countries, it did so with deep conviction in the AU’s legitimacy and moral authority.

This is not merely a diplomatic stance. It reflects Ethiopia’s long-standing belief that cooperation, not coercion, must guide our shared use of natural resources. We understand, intimately, that rivers do not respect borders. But we also believe that development must not be denied, nor must it come at the expense of others.

In the words of Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud: “Our challenge is not to deny the needs of any one of us, but to find the ways to balance — in the spirit of fairness and mutual respect.”

Kenya’s President William Ruto echoed the sentiment: “This is not just a dam. It is a Pan-African statement.” He is right. GERD exemplifies the kind of transformative, African-led infrastructure project envisioned by Agenda 2063, the African Union’s blueprint for continental development.

It also aligns with the AU’s Program for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA), which seeks to unlock Africa’s immense potential through cross-border integration and green investment.

Green Growth, Shared Power

GERD is not just about power in the electrical sense. It is about empowerment.

With a capacity of more than 5,000 megawatts, GERD is set to be the largest hydropower plant on the continent — poised to uplift Ethiopia’s industrial sector, expand rural access, and export power to neighbours.

Already, Ethiopia has begun supplying clean energy to Sudan, Kenya, and Djibouti, and talks are underway to export electricity to Tanzania, among others.  As President Salva Kiir of South Sudan said: “Together, we can turn our challenges into opportunities for peace, stability, and growth.”

When the international world said this project would not happen…the people stood tall

The project also strengthens Ethiopia’s commitment to climate-resilient growth. Hosting the 2nd African Climate Summit in Addis Ababa in September, Ethiopia underscored its resolve to lead on the continent’s green transition. GERD is proof that our climate goals are more than words — they are engineering realities.

A Bridge Across Oceans

As Ethiopia celebrated GERD’s inauguration, another historic summit was unfolding nearby: the 2nd Africa–CARICOM Summit, also held in Addis Ababa. Leaders from the Caribbean and Africa — two regions connected by pain, struggle, and resilience — came together to chart a future of shared prosperity, political solidarity, and reparatory justice.

Barbados Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley delivered one of the most moving tributes to GERD, calling it “the Adwa engineering feat.” Her words touched on more than scale — they invoked the spiritual legacy of Ethiopia’s 1896 victory against colonial invasion. That triumph, she reminded us, inspired generations across the African diaspora.

“When the international world said this project would not happen… the people stood tall,” she said. “$5 billion later, this speaks not just to prosperity but to what remains possible for all people of African origin.”

In that moment, GERD was no longer just Ethiopia’s. It became a collective symbol — a shared source of pride across continents and communities, from Kingston to Nairobi, from Bridgetown to Bamako.

The People’s Dam

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is not merely a government achievement. It is a people’s victory.

It is the woman who gave her gold earrings. The teacher who donated part of his pension. The diaspora who sent what they could from every corner of the globe. GERD is powered not just by turbines, but by a nation’s will to rise.

In Ethiopia, we call this spirit “Medemer” — a philosophy of synergy, of adding together. It is the ethos Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has promoted at home and abroad, a belief that when we combine our efforts with intention and dignity, the sum becomes greater than its parts.

It is this same spirit that guides our diplomacy, our energy policy, and our relationship with the wider African and Black global community.

Looking Forward, Together

As Ambassador of Ethiopia to the United Kingdom, I have the privilege of witnessing first-hand how narratives about Africa are changing. Where once we were seen only as recipients of aid, today we are recognized — and recognize ourselves — as agents of growth, innovation, and global relevance.

GERD is not a conclusion. It is a beginning.

A beginning of equitable energy access of African-led financing. Of regional cooperation that does not demand we compromise our dignity. It is a new solidarity between Africa and the diaspora.

To the people of Ethiopia: your endurance, sacrifice, and unity built this dam. And it is you who will carry its light forward.

To our African and Caribbean brothers and sisters: GERD is a gift we hope to share. It flows from our river, but it belongs to all who believe in progress shaped not by dominance, but by mutual uplift. As Prime Minister Mottley so eloquently put it, “Let us go forward in love, in unity — one aim, one purpose, one destiny. The Voice

More than 100 civilians have perished in a spate of attacks by Islamic State-backed rebels in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in mid-2025. The Islamic State’s Central African Province – known locally as Allied Democratic Forces – claimed an attack on Christian worshippers in late July which killed at least 49.

Other attacks in August killed 52 villagers. By mid-2025 the group had been more active than during any previous year. Stig Jarle Hansen, a researcher and author of several books on jihadism in Africa, answers questions on what’s behind the cycle of attacks.

What is the Islamic State’s Central African Province today?

I have written before on the evolution of the Islamic State’s Central African Province from its beginnings as the Allied Democratic Forces on the border between Uganda and eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. It was at the time sponsored by both Zaire (now DRC) and Sudan and even contained Christian members. However, this changed over time, and the organisation increasingly used Islamic rules and symbols in its indoctrination and propaganda.

In 2017, a video emerged showing a small group of its fighters declaring loyalty to the Islamic State, the Sunni jihadist terrorist organisation that, at its peak, controlled vast territory in Iraq and Syria and claimed to be a worldwide Islamic caliphate. In April 2019, the only remaining Islamic State periodical, Al-Naba, published its first pictures from Congo. Allied Democratic Forces allegiance to the Islamic State was declared later the same year.

The declaration was not embraced by all. Several of the old guard of leaders of the Allied Democratic Forces, such as Benjamin Kisokeranio, refused an oath of allegiance to the Islamic State and were severely punished by the organisation for that (page 57).

As a result, the group bears little resemblance to the original rebel group. There is a new and younger generation in the top leadership of Islamic State Central African Province. A prominent example is camp leader Ahmed Mahmood Hassan “Abwakasi”, a Tanzanian foreign fighter born three years before the original Allied Democratic Forces was created.

The group also frequently features in the Islamic State’s global media network. This makes the interchangeable references to Allied Democratic Forces and Islamic State Central African Province problematic in the present context.

Yet, there are some similarities between the old and new. First is that the organisation remains organised into “camps”. These can evacuate quickly in the face of strong enemy attacks and re-establish themselves in new areas. However, they also are more than mere military units; they are mobile villages, where the wives and children follow the fighters in their movement.

A second similarity is the propensity to attack civilians. In this respect they are not unique in a region known for targeting civilians. However, the group has changed in the sense that Christians have become explicitly a stated target.

The third similarity is its continued emphasis on forced recruitment.

What explains the resurgence in attacks?

Islamic State’s Central African Province’s most recent attacks on civilians may seem to suggest that it’s on an upswing, but this is not necessarily the case. Instead, the embattled group appears to be rebounding from several military defeats over the last years. The current situation fits in within an established pattern observed in the DRC over the last three decades. There has been a cyclical pattern of military offensives against Islamic State’s Central African Province. The group withdraws until the offensive ends, then reemerges. It is still in its withdrawal phase.

The current offensive against Islamic State Central African Province – Operation Shujaa – was launched jointly in 2021 by Uganda and DR Congo. The offensive seeks to defeat the Islamic State in North Kivu. By November 2023, the fourth phase of the offensive started. This operation was expanded further into areas west of the RN4 road, covering critical areas near the border of North Kivu and Ituri provinces.

The last offensive was strained by Congo’s need to fight the M23 offensive further south, and Congolese distrust of Uganda’s intentions inside Congo, but proceeded. Uganda, which had stayed out of the M23/Congo conflict, launched 6,000 soldiers and used air assets in the following campaign. Local militias also fought against the Islamic State. The operations did force Islamic State Central African Province to withdraw camps, and to centralise its forces.

Why target Christians?

First, it gives the group media attention in the global press and in Islamic State outlets. African affiliates have grown in their importance for the Islamic State; they are seen as examples of “success” and the “new fields of jihad”. Islamic State Central African Province shows they are active, despite the beating it has received from Uganda. Such attention might also lead to both new foreign fighter recruits and more financial support from outside Congo.

Tanzanian-born commander “Abwakasi” leads the unit behind most of the attacks against civilians. His closeness to the Islamic State centrally might contribute to such a modus operandi. Abwakasi seem to have a stronger ideological leaning, and this might influence his actions against civilians.

Moreover, the need to plunder new villages to sustain the organisation inevitably causes civilian casualties. Violence becomes a strategy to create fear among the locals to smooth forced recruitment, and ease the plundering of villages in new areas that the larger camps are fleeing to.

For Islamic State Central African Province, violence against Christians serves both an instrumental and an ideological purpose.

Where does this leave the Islamic State’s Central African province?

The group has been known for targeting Christians in the past, and is one of the few Islamic State provinces that operates in regions with a majority of Christians. By presenting these attacks as victories, without the need to confront military enemies, it serves as a distraction from the losses the organisation has faced, and a way to plunder and recruit new recruits. It should not be misunderstood as a sign that the organisation is winning on the battlefield. It’s rather a part of a cyclical pattern of withdrawal and advance that we have seen for the last three decades. Written by Stig Jarle Hansen, Professor of International Relations, Norwegian University of Life Sciences.