Ethiopian Leader Criticizes Hydropower Opponents Amid Expansion

By William Davison

March 31 (Bloomberg) -- Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said opponents of hydropower projects in poor countries are “bordering on the criminal,” amid plans in his country to boost output from the energy source as much as five-fold.

“We all agree that we have to fight and conquer poverty,” Meles said at a conference today in Addis Ababa, the capital. “To do that, we have to make massive investments in infrastructure, including power generation.”

Ethiopia has a hydropower potential of 45,000 megawatts, the second-largest in Africa after the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to the World Bank. Under a five-year plan, the country plans to boost power generation to as much as 10,000 megawatts and expand electricity coverage to 75 percent of the population from 41 percent now.

Meles’s government has faced criticism from conservation groups including London-based Survival International and International Rivers, based in California, for ignoring environmental concerns over the under-construction 1,870- megawatt Gibe III project. International Rivers said the project may be “one of Africa’s worst development disasters” because of the harm it may cause people in the south of the country.

The views of Western critics are “ironic” as Ethiopian facilities are “infinitely more environmentally and socially responsible than the projects in their countries, past and present,” Meles said. At stake in the debate is the “future of millions of people in Ethiopia and elsewhere on the continent,” he saidContinued