Ethiopian Ambassador to Nigeria, Legesse Haile, has said that Ethiopia did not borrow money from or receive funding from any external body to construct the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).
Haile disclosed this to journalists in Abuja, while responding to US President Donald Trump’s claim that American money was used to build the dam.
Trump was reported to have said at a recent rally in Syracuse, New York, that Ethiopia had taken all the water from the Nile River, leaving Egypt without water, and had built one of the world’s largest dams with American money.
“You know, it is not too good if you are Egypt and the Nile River has no water in it, but I worked that out,” Trump was quoted as saying.
However, Haile dismissed the assertion that the dam deprived downstream countries of Nile water, explaining that GERD was designed to generate electricity rather than consume or permanently retain water.
“Once the dam stores water at full capacity, which is already completed, water simply hits the turbine and continues to flow downstream countries.
“The water never stops and is continuing to flow every second without interruption,” he said.
The envoy further argued that Egypt’s Aswan High Dam currently held twice the storage capacity of GERD, adding that the Ethiopian project was Africa’s largest hydroelectric dam.
“There is also no coin taken from any external body to finance the construction of the GERD,” Haile said.
GERD, located on the Blue Nile River in Ethiopia’s Benishangul-Gumuz region near the Sudanese border, is Africa’s largest hydroelectric power project.
The multi-billion-dollar project was financed domestically through government allocations and Renaissance Bonds purchased by Ethiopian citizens and members of the diaspora.
Construction began in 2011, and the dam was officially inaugurated in September 2025.
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