Post by @madmires

A $5 BILLION dam built with American money? 🤔 Let’s get the facts straight! The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), inaugurated in September 2025, is one of Africa’s largest hydroelectric projects. But the story behind its financing is very different from what some politicians would have you believe. 🇪🇹 Ethiopia largely financed the dam itself. Ethiopians contributed through government bonds, public donations, fundraising campaigns and salary contributions. Members of the Ethiopian diaspora also helped fund this historic project. Reports from Deutsche Welle and other sources document this remarkable national effort. 🇨🇳 What about China? Chinese financing and companies played important roles in associated electricity infrastructure and electromechanical equipment. Italian contractors also played a major role in construction. This was an international engineering effort, but that does not mean American taxpayers paid for the dam. 🇪🇬 And what about the Nile? Egypt and Sudan have legitimate concerns about water security, reservoir management and how the dam’s operation could affect downstream water supplies. However, claiming that Ethiopia has simply taken all the Nile’s water is a gross oversimplification. The dam stores and regulates water from the Blue Nile; it does not make the entire Nile disappear. Its effects depend on rainfall, reservoir levels, releases and coordination between the countries. A president discussing international affairs should understand the difference between a country’s own investment, foreign technical assistance and American taxpayer funding. These are not interchangeable. Ethiopia’s achievement deserves to be discussed with facts, not misinformation. Africa’s development should not be rewritten to fit somebody else’s political narrative. What do you think? Should world leaders be held to a higher standard when making claims about other countries? #Ethiopia #AfricanHistory #africantiktok #AfricanDevelopment #truthmatters