The office coordinating the construction of a mega hydropower project called the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) recently announced that the construction had reached 95 percent. Soon after the statement, Facebook users shared a photo purported to show the finished dam. However, this is false: the image features the multi-purpose Tungabhadra dam in Karnataka, a state in southwest India.
“#Grand_Ethiopian_Renaissance_Dam 95% Ethiopia,” reads the caption of the photo published on Facebook on March 7, 2024.
The image shows water flowing over a large dam wall, down a spillway and into a river below. Green fields and other structures flank the river banks.
The post has been shared more than 50 times, while similar appeared elsewhere on Facebook, including here and here.
The GERD
The GERD is a $4.2 billion megaproject (archived here) built on the Nile and will be the largest dam in Africa when completed.
Its construction has been at the centre of regional disputes since its inception in 2011. Egypt and Sudan fear the massive dam will severely reduce the share of Nile water they receive and have repeatedly asked Addis Ababa to stop filling it until they have all reached agreement on how it should work.
Ethiopia, whose highlands contribute at least 85 percent of the water that flows into the Blue Nile river (archived here) where the GERD is situated, argues it urgently needs the dam for electrification and economic development.
Negotiations between the three countries have been led by the African Union, but so far no agreement has been reached.
In September 2023, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia announced the completion of the fourth and final filling of the dam (archived here).
On March 6, 2024, the GERD project coordination office said that 95% of the dam had been constructed (archived here).
Although the construction is nearly complete, it is not yet fully in operation.
In any case, the photo circulating on social media does not show the GERD.
India’s dam
AFP Fact Check conducted reverse image searches and found that the photo features the Tungabhadra Dam, a multi-purpose dam in Karnataka state in southwest India (archived here).
The search results included a photo (archived here) on the official website of the Indian Karnataka state tourism department along with detailed information about the dam located on the Tungabhadra River in Ballari district.
While the photo did not exactly match that in the false posts, the dam is the same one: there are identical power plants on either side of the river and twin towers at the end of the sluice gates.
Another similar image was uploaded to Dinodia, an Indian online stock photo agency, on September 21, 2021 (archived here).
According to Karnataka state’s official website, the dam was completed in 1953 and is used for irrigation, power generation and agriculture, among other things (archived here).