The Merowe dam, also known as Hamdab or Hamadab Dam, being constructed on the Nile’s fourth cataract in Sudan, is one of the largest in Africa. The 1250 MW hydroelectric station in the project will triple Sudan’s electric power generation.
The huge dam will be 9 kilometers long and about 225 feet high. The reservoir lake will extend to more than 175 kilometers upstream and flood the fertile valley all along within months of completion. Farmlands of the tribesmen in the region will be covered under water forever. The vast reservoir has led to the eviction of communities, creating tension between the government and the tribesmen inhabiting the areas.
The Manasir tribe, angered by the loss of its ancient homeland which will be almost entirely submerged, drove out foreign archaeologists from the area accusing them of helping the Sudanese government.
The ecological impact is yet to be calculated as the wide and long reservoir will separate and divide permanently the animal species of the delicate desert environment on its two sides.
As the construction of the dam nears completion, concerns about the submersion of important archaeological sites have also started emerging. The lake will swallow up countless artifacts and major fortresses of the Christian-era.
Archaeologists admit that an incalculable amount of information will be lost forever. Only a tiny fraction of the vast area has been excavated and studied by the archaeologists. This area has numerous unexplored pyramids. They are now in a hurry to salvage archaeological artifacts before the area is submerged.
Sudan’s antiquities chief Salah Ahmed said ‘This area was completely unknown to archaeologists before, it was a missing chapter in Sudan’s history and nobody was planning to go there because it’s very hard from a logistical point of view.’ The beauty of the fourth cataract will also be lost forever, he said.
The Chinese won the contract for the construction of the dam in 2002, the biggest international project the Chinese industry had ever participated in at that time. The work began in 2004 and is expected to be over in 2008.
The US $1.8 billion project is almost entirely meant for power generation and there are no definite plans for the development of agriculture, although the dam will prevent the annual flooding of farmlands downstream. The sites chosen for the resettlement of evicted farmers lie far away from the river in the more arid deserts. This is in contrast to the other major dam on the river, the Aswan, in Egypt where the waters of the reservoir has turned lands on both the banks of the Nile into centers of agricultural production.
