Ethiopia says mega-dam on River Nile is complete
Construction on the mega-project began in 2011, with the aim of generating electricity for Ethiopia and selling excess energy to its neighbours. It was built on the Blue Nile, one of the two tributaries to the River Nile, which also flows through Sudan. The Blue Nile provides 85% of the Nile's waters. Almost immediately after construction began, Egypt and Sudan warned the dam would massively hamper their own economies that are heavily reliant on the Nile for their own water supplies.
Several years of negotiations failed, and tensions between Ethiopia and Egypt & Sudan threatened to boil over to all-out war, as both sides signed military deals with rival nations in the region to bolster their own security. During his announcement of the dam's completion, Ahmed said: 'To our neighbours downstream - Egypt and Sudan - our message is clear: the Renaissance Dam is not a threat, but a shared opportunity. 'The energy and development it will generate stand to uplift not just Ethiopia,' Abiy said.
But neither Egypt nor Sudan see it this way. In 2024, Egypt signed a military cooperation deal with Somalia, a rival of Ethiopia, sending arms, military hardware and special forces to the nation. It also reportedly planned to send 10,000 soldiers to Somalia as part of a peacekeeping mission. That deal came after Ethiopia signed a military deal with Somaliland, a breakaway region of Somalia, in which is agreed to give the independent province 12 miles of its own coastline, opening the possibility of allowing a naval base on its land. Pictured: An image taken in 2013 shows workmen preparing to start construction on one side of the dam, which now extends from the hillside and across the river.
That same year, Ahmed warned that anyone planning to invade Ethiopia ought to 'think ten times' before doing so. He said that 'those who are afar and nearby' should know that 'we usually embarrass and repel those who dare try to invade us'. 'Anyone intending to invade Ethiopia should think not just once but 10 times because one great thing we Ethiopians know is [how] to defend ourselves,' the Ethiopian leader added.
Ethiopia first began generating electricity at the project, located in the northwest of the country around 30 km from the border with Sudan, in February 2022. At full capacity the huge dam can hold as much as 74 billion cubic metres of water and could generate more than 5,000 megawatts of power. Satellite images taken in 2020 showed water pooling behind the dam, with Ethiopia's water minister Seleshi Bekele admitting that year that the water level in the reservoir had increased from 1,720 feet (525 metres) to 1,837 feet (560 metres).
The row, which is now threatening to boil over once again, began simmering in 2011, with Egypt in turmoil amid the Arab Spring protests which forced Hosni Mubarak from power and created a leadership vacuum at the top of society. With Cairo effectively blinded, Ethiopia's then-Prime Minister Meles Zenawi launched a five-year Growth and Transformation plan, with the dam at its heart. His country, once among Africa's poorest, was emerging from the end of a decade of unprecedented growth - poverty had fallen, illiteracy rates were down, life expectancy had increased by a decade.
But the nation was still being held back, most notably by a lack of electricity - with 65 per cent of the country not connected to the grid. The dam would change all of that, providing enough power not just for the citizens of Ethiopia, but a surplus which could be exported to its neighbours, generating profit and providing opportunities for the whole region. Laying the first brick himself, Zenawi vowed the project would be finished 'whatever the cost'. He died the following year. The actual cost of the project is thought to be £3billion, but its financing is murky. Unusually, Ethiopia chose not to apply for international loans to bankroll it, instead turning to its own citizens and private loans.
The central bank, major businesses and everyday citizens were pressured - some say forced - into buying bonds that funded the project, with Ethiopian citizens living overseas saying they also faced pressure to buy in. While China is not officially invested in the project, Ethiopia is a major recipient of Chinese loans - receiving the second-highest total of any African country at £2.6billion, according to the China-Africa Research Initiative. Almost all of the loans were paid after construction on the dam had started. Chinese firms have also been heavily involved in construction, with multi-million pound contracts awarded to companies specialising in hydroelectric dams.
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BBC News
4 hours ago
- BBC News
Wetin di new US tax mean for money wey pipo for abroad dey send to family and friends back home
Di One Big Beautiful Act wey don dey signed into law by di U.S. President Donald Trump dey impose a 1% tax on certain types of cross-border money transfers. Dis go cause worry among African migrants and dia families wey dey rely on cash wey dem dey send give dem from obodoyinbo. For 2024, at least $12 billion bin flow from di United States to African families through remittances. But dis newly approved 1% tax on informal money transfers fit comot millions from dat stream. Di US President Trump budget mega-bill become law afta e pass a final vote for di House of Representatives and afta Congress bin debate di package for days, as members of both di House and Senate also work overnights for di Capitol. Join Pidgin WhatsApp Channel for similar tori dem. However, while di final tax rate dey far lower dan di 3.5% wey dem first propose, di law dey target specific remittance channels. E also apply to transfers wey dem dey make through cash, money orders, or cashier cheques, wit exemptions for transactions wey dem dey send through bank accounts or U.S.-issued debit and credit cards. 'Dis na tax on progress' A Nigerian-born professor wey base for Minnesota, wey no wan make we mention im name, tell di BBC say di tax go directly affect how e dey send money to relatives for Enugu. "I dey build a retirement home for my village and dis require me to send money evritime for di project. I also send money to support my mama back home," e tok. Dis week alone, e don send $700 for building materials. "E fit look like just $7 on evri $700 wey we send, but dis na tax on progress, care, and support. Di emotional cost dey bigger dan di financial one." Though e prefer to use banks, e admit say cash apps dey faster, especially during emergencies. "No be evrione wey we support back home get a bank account. Many dey rely on pickup centres or cash agents. Dis law be like say e blind to dat reality." Di law dey scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2026 as part of a broader effort to boost federal revenues. Di tax dey aimed to tightening oversight of informal cross-border transfers, a category wey include many of di ways African migrants dey send money home. But for millions of African families, dis informal channels no just common, dem dey essential. For Yasmine Atim, a 22-year-old Ugandan computer science student for Texas, di tax go force her to retink how she dey send money to her younger siblings for Central Uganda. "I no dey work full-time, but I try to send $100, $150, or $200 wen I fit," she tok. "Even if na just $1, dat na di money my brother fit use to get a textbook or transport to school." Yasmine dey use a mix of cash apps. "I try to set up a wire transfer once, but my bank no allow international transactions from a student account." For her, remittances no be just about money but about to stay emotionally connected to home. "Sometimes, di only way I fit show up for my family na to send dat money. E dey hurt to tink say di govment want a piece of dat. I fit try make I no send big amounts to reduce di number of transactions wey dem go tax. But dat no go make sense. Family need help wen dem need am." Wetin e mean for Africa Di final text of di law tok say, "we hereby impose on any remittance transfer a tax wey equal 1% of di amount of such transfer. Na di sender go pay di tax." While exemptions exist for transfers through U.S. financial institutions or dose wey dey funded by U.S.-issued debit or credit cards, many African migrants still dey depend on informal channels. Wit foreign aid to Africa wey dey reduce, remittances don become a lifeline. According to World Bank data, remittance flows into Africa bin pass $92 billion (€81 billion) for 2024, wit at least $12 billion wey dey come from di United States. Di U.S. remain di biggest origin kontri for global remittances wey dey account for ova $656 billion for2023 alone. Top African Remittance Recipients (2024) Kontri Remittances ($) Egypt 22.7 Billion Nigeria 19.8 Billion Morocco 12.0 Billion Kenya 4.8 Billion Ghana 4.6 Billion Senegal 3.0 Billion Zimbabwe 3.0 Billion Zambia 2.8 Billion Uganda 1.49 Billion DR Congo 1.3 Billion Source: World Bank, 2024 According to di Africa Finance Corporation 2025 State of Africa Infrastructure Report, remittances don consistently pass foreign direct investment, portfolio flows, and official development assistance. Dis make am di most stable and dependable source of external finance from Africa. "Remittances dey more dan money," di professor for Minnesota tok. "Dem be infrastructure, education, medical care, food, and dignity. To tax am na like to tax veri engine of development for many African homes."
Times
8 hours ago
- Times
The hidden history of slavery in the Islamic world
Beshir Agha was born in Abyssinia in 1655, seized by slave traders, castrated as a boy and sold for 30 piastres. When he died in 1746 he left a fortune of 30 million piastres, 800 jewel-studded watches and 160 horses. When he was a slave to the Ottoman governor of Egypt, he received an education. He was clearly gifted; he soon found a berth at the Topkapi Palace, the main residence of the Ottoman sultan. There he proved an adept functionary, particularly good at organising lavish entertainments, and a skilful palace politician, rising through the ranks to serve as chief harem eunuch to two sultans. Beshir is one of the many fascinating characters in Captives and Companions, Justin Marozzi's history of slavery in the Islamic world. Marozzi starts his account in the 7th century, during the life of Muhammad. Marozzi quotes one of the most famous Quranic pronouncements on slavery, one that treats inequality between master and slave as a fact of life: 'Allah has favoured some of you over others in provision.' Allah had evidently favoured the Prophet Muhammad, whose tastes were ecumenical — his 70 slaves included Copts, Syrians, Persians and Ethiopians. The sexual exploitation of female slaves by their male owners is permissible too, counsels the Quran. This furnished the Ottoman sultans with an alibi for their harem of enslaved concubines — and in our time armed Islamic State with a sanction for the rape and enslavement of Yazidi women in northern Iraq. As Marozzi rightly argues in this history of slavery in the Islamic world, it is disingenuous to deny the Islamic State its Islamic character, as Barack Obama once attempted. These are not secular fanatics but Muslim fundamentalists. For centuries Quranic justifications were invoked to defend slavery as a cultural tradition — as if it were no more troubling than morris dancing. Small wonder, then, that Muslim nations were among the last to abolish it — Saudi Arabia in 1962, Oman in 1970, Mauritania in 1981. But the practice persists. In Saudi Arabia, according to the Global Slavery Index, there are 740,000 people living in modern slavery. Marozzi opens his book in the Kayes region of western Mali, where hereditary slavery persists, as does the right of masters to rape the wives and daughters of their slaves. Despite its long history and continued presence, however, slavery in the Islamic world remains woefully underresearched. Western parochialism bears some blame; James Walvin's A Short History of Slavery, for example, devotes 201 of its 235 pages to the Atlantic trade. But so does western timidity. The historian Bernard Lewis once lamented that, thanks to contemporary sensibilities, it had become 'professionally hazardous' for bright young things to probe slavery in Muslim societies. • Read more of the latest religion news, views and analysis. Thankfully Marozzi is unencumbered by such PC pretensions. He is careful with words, preferring 'the slave trade in the Islamic world' to 'Muslim slavery' — as we do not, after all, call the Atlantic trade 'Christian slavery'. Likewise, he never deserts perspective. While discussing the million or so European Christian captives taken by Barbary corsairs, he reminds us that Christendom enslaved twice as many Muslims in the early modern period. If the Arabs enslaved 17 million souls between AD650 and 1905, Marozzi says that we would do well to remember that nearly as many — perhaps 14 million — Africans were claimed by the Atlantic trade in a much shorter period. Captives and Companions, then, is an unsentimental unveiling of a subject that has long been enshrouded in scholarly purdah. To be sure, Marozzi breaks no new ground in these pages, drawing heavily on recent work by North African, Turkish and a handful of western scholars. Yet the result is an elegant and ambitious synthesis, serving up a scintillating compendium of potted lives. We meet Bilal ibn Rabah, the Ethiopian slave who in AD610 'had his head turned' by the self-styled Prophet Muhammad, rejecting the old gods to become one of his first followers. For this Bilal was tortured by his master, Umayya ibn Khalaf — who met his end at the Battle of Badr in AD624, cut down by his former slave after the prophet's fledgling army routed the Quraysh tribe. Muhammad then appointed Bilal the voice of Islam; as the first muezzin (the caller to prayer), his voice — a resonant baritone — was the one the earliest Muslims heard five times daily, beckoning them to prayer. • The 21 best history books of the past year to read next That was Islam in its radical infancy. Later Arabs, Marozzi shows, shed Muhammad's colour-blindness and took up trafficking darker-skinned Africans. Racism ran deep. Even an intelligent fellow like the 10th-century historian Masudi could be dismayingly provincial and downright racist in his descriptions of black Africans. The Zanj, as they were called, had ten qualities, he wrote: 'Kinky hair, thin eyebrows, broad noses, thick lips, sharp teeth, malodorous skin, dark pupils, clefty hands and feet, elongated penises, and excessive merriment.' Chafing under the Arab yoke, they struck back in AD869, launching what may have been history's largest slave revolt. For 14 years they flattened cities, torching mosques and enslaving their former slaveholders. Something like a million lives were lost before the Zanj Rebellion was quelled. If male slaves could pose a physical threat, female slaves were another kind of risk. The Nestorian physician Ibn Butlan, writing in the 11th century, offered cautionary counsel: resist lustful impulse purchases 'for the tumescent has no judgment, since he decides at first glance, and there is magic in the first glance'. The concubine Arib beguiled no fewer than eight caliphs over seven decades. Al-Amin, clearly a paedophile, adored her when she was still in her early teens, and Mutamid, surely a gerontophile, loved her in her seventies. Even into her nineties she was propositioned, although she demurred: 'Ah, my sons, the lust is present, but the limbs are helpless.' Less threatening were enslaved eunuchs. Although the Quran forbade castration, the enterprising Abbasids found a workaround since their ever-expanding harems needed a steady supply of unthreatening men. Infidels in sub-Saharan Africa did the dirty work of sourcing and exporting eunuchs. It was a gruesome business. Even as late as in the 19th century, nine in ten boys put under the knife died. Western visitors were horrified by the presence of eunuchs in the holy places, although Marozzi might have noted that Christianity, too, had its eunuchs — the Sistine Chapel's last castrato wasn't retired until 1903. Gliding through the ages, dropping a metaphor here and a maxim there, Marozzi's prose recalls an older tradition of history writing — the effortless fluidity of a John Julius Norwich or Jan Morris. Reading him, one thinks of Tintoretto: vast canvases, mannered style, high drama, narrative drive. But it has its drawbacks. Marozzi, whose previous books include The Arab Conquests and Islamic Empires, delights in the zany and lurid. He loves his lobbed heads and unruly libidos, his swivel-eyed slavers and concupiscent concubines. Consider the tale of Thomas Pellow, 'an eleven-year-old Cornish lad' who, in 1715, ignored his parents' warnings and set sail from Falmouth in search of adventure. 'If only he had listened to them,' Marozzi sighs. Snatched by Moroccan corsairs off Cape Finisterre, Pellow landed in Meknes, where beatings and bastinadings — feet flayed while strung upside down — quickly dulled his taste for colourful exploits. To save his skin he 'turned Turk', although he later insisted it was all for show: 'I always abominated them and their accursed principle of Mahometism.' • Read more book reviews and interviews — and see what's top of the Sunday Times Bestsellers List As slaves go, he did well. He climbed the ranks, led a 30,000-man slave raid into Guinea and did as he was told, 'stripping the poor negroes of all they had, killing many of them, and bringing off their children into the bargain'. Then came the compulsory marriage in order to sire more slaves for his master: eight African women were paraded before him, but Pellow, bigoted fellow that he was, turned them down, 'not at all liking their colour'. He demanded a wife 'of my colour' and was duly granted one, although by now he was hardly a pasty Cornishman. When he escaped he was briefly mistaken for a 'Moor'. Back in London, he felt alienated from his homeland — until he ended up at dinner at the Moroccan ambassador's, who offered him 'my favourite dish': a big bowl of couscous. Captives and Companions: A History of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Islamic World by Justin Marozzi (Allen Lane £35 pp560). To order a copy go to Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members
The Guardian
9 hours ago
- The Guardian
Has Trump taken leadership lessons from cold war-era Africa?
Ever since Donald Trump returned to power, pundits have struggled to find apt analogies for his style of governance. Some liken his loyalty demands, patronage networks and intimidation tactics to the methods of a mafia don. Others cast him as a feudal overlord, operating a personality cult rooted in charisma and bound by oaths, rewards and threats rather than laws and institutions. A growing number of artists and AI creatives are depicting him as a Viking warrior. And of course, fierce debates continue over whether the moment has arrived for serious comparisons with fascist regimes. While some of these analogies may offer a degree of insight, they are fundamentally limited by their Eurocentrism – as if 21st-century US politics must still be interpreted solely through the lens of old-world history. If we truly want to understand what is unfolding, we must move beyond Scandinavian sagas and Sicilian crime lore. I've found it increasingly difficult not to see striking parallels between recent events in the US and the rise of cold war-era dictatorships in Africa. It began with Trump's renaming of the Gulf of Mexico and Denali, which recalled how Mobutu Sese Seko, on a personal whim, changed Congo into Zaire in 1971. Geographical renaming has been extensive in Africa because of its history of colonialism, but now the US has started changing names too. Trump's deployment of national guard troops and marines to Los Angeles after protests over immigration raids also echoed Mobutu's preferred method for dealing with civil unrest: presidential guards patrolling the streets to crush protests. The blunt use of military force to suppress domestic opposition is a tactic associated with figures such as Idi Amin in Uganda, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe and Paul Biya in Cameroon – albeit with deadlier consequences. Trump's aggressive deportation of undocumented Latino workers also resembles Amin's 1972 expulsion of Uganda's Asian minority. Amin framed it as a way to return economic power to 'the ordinary Ugandan', but it led to financial ruin. The embrace of bizarre, theatrical economic measures that look great on television but wreak havoc in practice is another striking parallel. Trump's tariffs, announced with patriotic fanfare on 'liberation day', evoke Mugabe's grandiose land reforms of the 1980s, which hastened Zimbabwe's collapse. Anti-intellectualism, egomania and delusions of grandeur were hallmarks of dictatorships in Africa. Ivory Coast's Félix Houphouët-Boigny built a replica of St Peter's Basilica in his home town. Jean-Bédel Bokassa crowned himself 'emperor' of Central African Republic. 'Marshal' Mobutu ensured that Concorde could land in his native village. A similar extravaganza of ambition has reached the US, with Trump accepting a luxury Boeing 747 from Qatar and hoping his face will be carved into Mount Rushmore beside George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. The army parade in Washington on the day the US military turned 250 and Trump turned 79 was another moment of self-aggrandising narcissism. A populist personality cult and masculine pride often go hand in hand with deep paranoia and contempt. Trump's relentless war on academia and the free press fits squarely within this tradition. In Equatorial Guinea, President Francisco Macías Nguema outlawed the word 'intellectual' and prosecuted academics. Amin terrorised universities to the point of brain-drain. At first glance, viewing Trump as a westernised version of one of Africa's dictators may seem jarring. After all, his interest in the continent appears limited to its natural resources, not its political models. The trade tariffs and travel bans he recently unleashed have hit several African countries hard, and his cruel withdrawal of aid hardly suggests admiration for anything African. What's more, Trump has never set foot on African soil and reportedly dismissed the continent as a cluster of 'shithole countries'. Only when a raw materials deal is in sight does he spring into life, such as last week when a 'peace deal' between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda was signed at the White House. 'We're getting, for the United States, a lot of the mineral rights from the Congo as part of it,' Trump said. But once the comparison between Trump and a cold war dictator is made, it becomes hard to unsee. And it shouldn't surprise us. The postcolonial dictator was, to a significant degree, an American creation. Sooner or later, it had to come home. The US supported repressive regimes unconditionally during the cold war, viewing them as bulwarks against communism – not just in Africa, but in Asia and Latin America. Dictators such as Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, Suharto in Indonesia, Augusto Pinochet in Chile and Jorge Rafaél Videla in Argentina remained in power for decades thanks to US backing. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the US abruptly abandoned these allies and championed the gospel of democratisation. Though the 1990s were rich in rhetoric about human rights, good governance and the rule of law, on the ground the spectre of autocracy never vanished entirely. We're now witnessing a startling reversal. With the demise of USAID and its retreat from a role promoting global democracy, it's not only that the US has turned its back on democratising countries in Africa and elsewhere – but that it has begun to imitate some of the worst historical examples of authoritarian rule. Viewing Trump's regime through the lens of cold war-era autocracies in postcolonial states offers a framework that is both alarming and oddly reassuring. If there is one enduring lesson from the history of autocracy in Africa, it is this: things can turn ugly, fast. Cold war dictatorships were ruthless, bloody and often ended in chaos and state collapse. Yet their histories also show that when courts are neutered and legislatures reduced to rubber stamps, civil society, independent media and the moral force of religious and academic institutions can emerge as the last formidable strongholds against tyranny. After all, sooner or later, dictators die, whereas collective efforts remain. David Van Reybrouck is philosopher laureate for the Netherlands and Flanders. His books include Congo: The Epic History of a People and Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World
