Ethiopian Prime Minister Abe Ahmed Ali opened a new dam on the eastern side of the Lake Tana basin, the source of the Blue Nile and the country's largest lake.
According to the Ethiopian news agency INA, the dam, dubbed "Rab" Bani in the state of Amhara, south of Gondar, is 800 meters high and 73.5 meters high and costing 4.6 billion dollars (150 million dollars).
According to the agency, the dam has been operational since 2000 and stopped for various difficulties in the area of "gender", noting that the purpose of the dam is the irrigation of 50 thousand acres near Lake Tana.
The dam has a capacity of 234 million cubic meters of water, which enables the development of 20 thousand hectares of land through irrigation.
The dam is located on the River Raba, one of the tributaries of the Blue Nile east of Lake Tana, one of the seven permanent rivers running into the lake, in addition to 60 other seasonal tributaries in Lake Tana, which supplies the Blue Nile with 3.7 billion cubic meters.
Ethiopia has built the Al Nahda dam, which has led to a crisis in the relations between Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan, due to differences over Nile water quotas that may be affected by the giant project which is not over.
