Ethiopia has begun to build a dam on the Agma River in the Blue Nile Basin in the northeastern Amhara state, which is prone to drought, with a cost of 125 million U.S. dollars. The Agma River is located in the Blue Nile Basin in the arid-prone Amhara state in northeastern Ethiopia.

The Ethiopian Minister of Water, Irrigation and Energy Seleshi Bekele held a groundbreaking ceremony on January 9, 2021, with the help of Agegnehu Teshager, head of state of Amhara Province.

The dam was built by the China Civil Engineering Corporation in cooperation with a number of local companies for the Amhara water engineering construction company AWWCE.

AWWCE is the national agency responsible for all water-related construction and distribution in Amhara (the second largest state of the Federal Republic of Ethiopia).

When completed in 2024, it will be 45 meters high and 3.71 meters long, with a water storage capacity of 55 million cubic meters and an irrigated area of about 7,000 hectares.

Ethiopia has suffered many droughts in recent years. The most recent was the El Niño event in 2015 and 2016, which caused approximately 15 million people to seek humanitarian food assistance and 430,000 children suffered severe malnutrition. Editor/Huang Lijun