Qualla: Merowe Dam

Merowe Dam: Introduction

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lubumbashi (talk) 09:30, 8 July 2009 (UTC), Public domain. Compensation for a date palm amounts to about four years' harvest. A well-tended date palm can bear fruit for a hundred years. That math -- the kind you run while watching your grandfather's orchard get bulldozed -- tells much of what there is to tell about the Merowe Dam. Ten 125-megawatt Francis turbines now spin on the Nile at the Fourth Cataract, producing 5.5 terawatt-hours per year, nearly doubling Sudan's grid-connected electrical capacity when they came online in 2009. Between 55,000 and 70,000 people lost their villages, their riverbank date groves, and the only economy they had ever known. The dam is the largest hydropower project built in Africa in a century. It was also one of the most contested.

Read more: Merowe Dam on Qualla

Image: Lubumbashi (talk) 09:30, 8 July 2009 (UTC) | Public domain

Merowe Dam: The Longest-Delayed Dam on the Nile

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sudani, Public domain. Colonial-era engineers had proposed a dam at the Fourth Cataract since the early twentieth century. The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan authorities returned to the idea repeatedly: equalize the Nile flow, irrigate cotton, tame the flooding. Sudan gained independence in 1956, and Egypt respo...

Read more: Merowe Dam on Qualla

Image: Sudani | Public domain

Merowe Dam: What Got Flooded

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sudani, Public domain. The Manasir, Hamadab, and Amri peoples had farmed the Nile's islands and banks at the Fourth Cataract for centuries. Their villages had no paved roads, no grid power, and little contact with the rest of Sudan, but they were not poor in the ways that term usually means. Date palms...

Read more: Merowe Dam on Qualla

Image: Sudani | Public domain

Merowe Dam: The Compensated Palms

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Haberlah at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. Before the flooding, the government burned the compensated date palms so they could not be repossessed. Photographs from 2008 show smoke rising from the groves along the Nile. The UN rights expert Miloon Kothari reported that many displaced families had received no warning before...

Read more: Merowe Dam on Qualla

Image: David Haberlah at English Wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

Merowe Dam: Who Paid, Who Built

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit F-zoellner, CC BY-SA 4.0. The $2.945 billion project was funded by a coalition visible nowhere else in African infrastructure: China Import Export Bank led with $608 million. Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development contributed $477 million. Saudi Fund, Abu Dhabi Fund, Kuwait Fund, Oman Fund, and Qat...

Read more: Merowe Dam on Qualla

Image: F-zoellner | CC BY-SA 4.0

Merowe Dam: War Comes to the Turbines

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit محمد عادل الحسين, CC BY-SA 3.0. Since April 2023 Sudan has been consumed by civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces. On 13 January 2025, RSF drones struck the Merowe Dam's power station, setting fire to the facility and damaging a key transformer. The attack caused blackouts as ...

Read more: Merowe Dam on Qualla

Image: محمد عادل الحسين | CC BY-SA 3.0