The Legacy & Vision of The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam
Lawrence Freeman standing next to Eng. Ephrem Kiden on his right, and Tesfahun Gobezay, State Min of Communications, on his left in May 2025, in front of the nearly completed GERD
July 24, 2025
The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam: A Legacy of Shared Vision & Unified Purpose of Four Ethiopian Leaders
By Dr Birhanu Lenjiso, Oromiya, Ethiopia
1. Introduction
The Nile River, the world’s longest river stretching over 6,650 kilometers, is a lifeline for eleven riparian states, with Ethiopia contributing approximately 85% of its waters through the Blue Nile and other tributaries. Despite this significant contribution, Ethiopia’s access to Nile waters has been curtailed by colonial-era agreements, notably the 1929 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty and the 1959 Nile Waters Agreement, which allocated the majority of Nile waters to Egypt and Sudan while sidelining upstream states like Ethiopia. The treaties that perpetuated an inequitable status quo, prompted Ethiopia to pursue the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) as a means to reclaim its rightful share of the Nile’s resources.
Initiated in 2011, the GERD is a 5,150 megawatt MW hydroelectric dam on the Blue Nile, near the Ethiopian-Sudanese border. Beyond its technical specifications, the GERD embodies Ethiopia’s aspirations for energy security, economic development, and regional influence. The project’s realization is a testament to the vision and resilience of four Ethiopian leaders: Emperor Haile Selassie, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. Each leader navigated unique challenges, financial constraints, political instability, and diplomatic pressures, to advance the GERD, transforming it into a symbol of Ethiopian unity, sovereignty, and prosperity.
Hamilton versus Wall Street: Relevance to Ethiopia & Africa
By Dr. Birhanu M Lenjiso. Former State Minister of Irrigation Development, & Director General of Oromia Agricultural Authority, Ethiopia
Introduction
About five years ago, my friend Lawrence Freeman, gave me an enlightening book: Hamilton Versus Wall Street: The Core Principles of the American System of Economics published by Nancy Bradeen Spannaus in 2019.
Lawrence Freeman and Dr Birhanu Lenjiso
Alexander Hamilton is regarded as a Founding Father of the United States. Beyond, being a chief of staff to General Washington, one of the most influential interpreters and promoters of the Constitution, and the founder of the nation’s financial system, he was the first Secretary of the Treasury, who established the nation’s financial system, including the national bank, federal assumption of state debts, and a framework for economic growth. As an aide to George Washington, he was an artillery officer and strategist. He was also chief author of the Federalist papers, which urged ratification of the U.S. Constitution. He is credited for shaping early American politics, but also made powerful enemies, most notably Aaron Burr, who fatally shot him in 1804. His legacy continues to influence the U.S. financial system and debates surrounding federal power.
I visited Ethiopia from May 12 to May 25, 2025, to evaluate the progress of Ethiopia’s economy. I met with government officials, visited manufacturing plants, farms, a sugar refinery, and spent a day touring the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. I will be posting articles on what I observed over the weeks ahead.
Ethiopia Builds up Manufacturing Foundation to Become Africa’s Future Industrial Hub, Says US Analyst
ETHIOPIA DESIGNED, CONSTRUCTED and FINANCED THIS ENTIRE TRANSFORMATIVE PROJECT
re posted from CONSTRUCTION REVIEW
Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam Nears Full Completion at 98.66%
Published on by M Kubwa
The update on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD)came during a cabinet meeting led by Prime Minister Abiy Ahemed, who has spearheaded the project as vital to the nation’s development.
According to a statement from the Prime Minister’s office, the government considers the GERD’’ one of the most important strategic infrastructure projects in the country ‘’that will significantly boost Ethiopia’s electricity generation and enable energy exports to neighbouring countries.
Special Edition || Ethiopia has huge untapped potential in terms of Tourism ||
Mar 29, 2025
Special Edition || Ethiopia has huge untapped potential in terms of Tourism || Tourism is among the five economic pillars as Oromia and even as national. The OTC has tirelessly been working to achieve desired goal as a regional level and beyond
On February 18, a high-level delegation from Russia led by Valentina Matvienko, the chair of the Federation Council, arrived in Addis Ababa. The delegation included senators from the upper house of the Russian parliament and representatives from 14 ministries and agencies.
Russia and Ethiopia signed a roadmap for the development of the countries’ cooperation in the field of using nuclear technologies for peaceful purposes. It followed a meeting between the country’s Minister of Economic Development, Maxim Reshetnikov, and the Ethiopian Minister of Innovation and Technology, Belete Molla.
re posted with gratitute from COVERT ACTION MAGAZINE
Keith Harmon Snow Was a Courageous Investigative Journalist Who Exposed Lies Regarding the Rwandan Genocide
By Jeremy Kuzmarov
[Source: africanagenda.net]
Snow followed in the footsteps of CovertAction Information Bulletin founder Philip Agee in his attempt to expose the close connections between the CIA and multi-national corporations and in his analysis of the political-economy of U.S. imperialism.
Keith Harmon Snow, after suffering from cancer, died in early December at the age of 64. He was a courageous investigative journalist who was ignored by the mainstream media because of his truthful reporting about Rwanda and U.S. foreign policy in Central Africa.
Snow exposed the false narrative underlying the 1994 Rwandan genocide in the West, presenting the Tutsi as the victims of a genocidal Hutu extermination plan, and the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) under the leadership of Paul Kagame as Rwanda’s savior.
Snow’s writings showed, rather, that the RPF instigated a civil war in Rwanda after illegally invading the country from Uganda with U.S. and UK sponsorship, and that Kagame triggered the genocide by shooting down the airplane of Rwanda’s Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana.
Furthermore, Kagame’s RPF forces carried out a huge proportion of the killings during the genocide—even setting up open-air crematoria to better dispose of the bodies—and perpetrated a genocide of Hutu refugees who were expelled from Rwanda during repeated invasions of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Rather than being a bystander to genocide as is commonly believed, Snow’s work detailed how the U.S. was deeply complicit in it. During the late 1980s, the CIA began supporting Tutsi exiles based in Uganda and greenlighted the RPF invasion of Rwanda from Uganda. Paul Kagame was trained in psychological warfare at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, where he learned the art of trickery and deceit.
Snow exposed how Kagame worked closely with Roger Winter, head of the U.S. Committee for Refugees (USCR) and a suspected CIA agent who was decorated by Kagame at the July 4, 2012, celebration of the 16th anniversary of the RPF’s victory.
Roger Winter receives decoration from Paul Kagame on the 16th anniversary of the RPF’s victory. [Source: whale.to]
In the early 1980s, Winter had supported the National Resistance Movement (NRM) in Uganda led by Yoweri Museveni, Uganda’s current leader, Kagame and the Hema Tutsi aristocracy, who fought against Uganda’s then-President Milton Obote, a one-time socialist.
For the remainder of the decade, Winter worked to advance the militant plans of the Rwandan Tutsi aristocracy, which had been expelled from Rwanda when the Hutu took over in the 1960s and wanted to establish a greater Tutsi-Hema empire in the heart of Africa.[1]
Snow made clear that the motive behind Winter and the CIA’s operations in Central Africa was to establish a U.S.-UK proxy regime in Central Africa that could help Western multi-national corporations access the DRC’s rich mineral wealth.
Winter also provided covert support to John Garang, commander of the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), a U.S. proxy force known for its brutality that waged an insurgency against Sudan’s pro-China government and contributed to the division of oil-rich Sudan.[2]
Roger Winter shakes hands with SPLA Commander John Garang in the mid-1980s. [Source: keithharmonsnow.com]
Writing from the Heart
Born in Williamsburg, Massachusetts, Keith Harmon Snow first became knowledgeable about Central African politics after working as a genocide investigator for UNICEF in Rwanda.[3]
Starting his career as a scientist working on highly classified weapons systems for the Pentagon, Snow found a higher calling as a war correspondent, working in, among other places, Afghanistan, Congo, Ethiopia, Sudan and Mongolia.
An expert witness in U.S. immigration asylum hearings for Rwandans, Snow held audience with Muammar Gaddafi prior to the U.S. invasion of Libya, which he strongly opposed, and testified before the International Court of Justice in Spain, supporting the war-crimes indictments against current Rwandan government officials.
Blacklisted in the mainstream U.S. media and barred from three U.S. colleges (Smith, Mt. Holyoke and Hampshire) and two African countries (Ethiopia and Rwanda[4]), Snow received four Project Censored Awards, was often consulted by Africans, and was invited to speak in Paris in 2023 and again in 2024 at the convention of the Rwandan government-in-exile.
Keith Harmon Snow and Paul Rusesabagina in Chicago. [Source: keithharmonsnow.com]
Described by one of his Congolese friends as “adventurous” and “full of life,” Snow visited most countries in Africa and swam in all of Congo’s rivers. Arrested for civil disobedience at anti-globalization protests in the 1990s, he traveled widely in Southeast Asia, chronicling his journeys through both written and photo journalism.[5]
Living for the last several years in sparse conditions on Greens Island, Maine, Snow appeared in the acclaimed documentary Enjoy Poverty by Renzo Martens that exposed Unilever plantation slavery in the DRC.
Snow also wrote a book, The Worst Interests of the Child, exposing corruption in the Connecticut family court system, which Snow said had been transformed into a “private profit-based system of extortion and criminal racketeering” that “enriches lawyers, judges, doctors and psychologists.”[6]
Survived by a young son, Birch, who he doted upon, Keith’s primary source of work was ConsciousAlliance.com, which jolted minds across the world into perceiving Africa`s story of wars and poverty in a new light.
His journalism was of extremely high quality. Snow always provided detailed evidence to support his indictment of corrupt government institutions, and he was astute in recognizing the economic imperatives underlying most state crimes.
Snow’s writings also provided a strong African voice missing from mainstream U.S. media accounts, and expressed compassion for the victims of Western crimes and their African proxies.
According to P.D. Lawton, South African editor of African Agenda, Snow “wrote from the heart,” powered by what Lawton called “one of the most brilliant minds.”
Decrying the U.S. militarization of Africa, Snow’s writings not only documented the atrocities of Western-backed regimes in Rwanda and Uganda but also Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Ethiopia under Meles Zenawi, which committed a genocide against the Anuak people.[7]
At one point, Snow traveled with the SPLA in South Sudan and documented the horrible consequences of the Western-backed civil war and centrality of the drive for oil in fueling it.
Snow wrote that the U.S. strategy “to fracture and divide Sudan is similar to the strategy at work in the Congo, and it echoes the RPF’s strategy…used to achieve regime change in Rwanda, 1990 to 1994.”
Snow castigated journalists reporting on Africa for The New York Times and The Atlantic, among other prestigious outlets, for adopting emotionally potent oversimplifications—as in the false dichotomy created between Hutu villains and Tutsi heroes in the Rwandan genocide.[8]
The same journalists helped manufacture consent by whitewashing U.S. crimes and by failing to disclose how multi-national corporations fueled African conflicts as they bought off politicians like George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
Snow spotlighted the importance of Maurice Tempelsman in driving what he called the “holocaust in Central Africa” that claimed some six to ten million people.
A top Democratic Party donor whose intelligence ties were reflected in his serving as a chairman of the Africa-America Institute, a CIA front involved in propaganda and bringing African leaders to study in the U.S., Tempelsman was chairman of the board of directors of Lazare Kaplan International Inc. (LKI), the largest diamond company in the U.S., and partner in Leon Tempelsman & Son, which has lucrative mining interests throughout Africa.[9]
Tempelsman’s political influence was apparent in 1998 when he accompanied President Bill Clinton on a trip to Central Africa where Clinton expanded U.S. support for the Rwandan and Ugandan governments as they invaded the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in order to plunder its diamond and mineral wealth.
Back in the 1960s, Tempelsman had cultivated close ties with Congolese dictator Joseph Mobutu and worked with CIA agent Larry Devlin to plan the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, who had wanted to place Congo’s mineral wealth under national control. Tempelsman and Devlin further supported Mobutu’s efforts to suppress a rebellion led by Lumumba’s followers.[10]
In a March 2006 article, Snow criticized Human Rights Watch Report for neglecting to discuss how the Oppenheimer-owned Anglo American Corporation and the Canada-based Barrick Gold, for which former President George H.W. Bush was a paid adviser, helped fuel violence in the DRC.[11]
Snow pointed out that a director of Anglo American, Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, was a director of Royal Dutch Shell and a member of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s advisory board, and that the Anglo-Ashanti Company sent its top lawyers into eastern DRC to aid rebel militia leaders being arrested there.
Snow also relayed that a number of mining company owners who profited from the exploitation of the DRC were donors to Bill Clinton, including Jean-Raymond Boulle, who received a billion-dollar deal for mines in the Congo at Kolwezi (cobalt) and Kipushi (zinc) from Laurent Kabila’s Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Zaire (ADFL) before they were even officially in power.
Clinton’s administration, not coincidentally, helped bring Kabila to power by helping to finance the Rwandan-Ugandan invasions of Congo in the late 1990s.
Bill Clinton and Paul Kagame. [Source: sfbayview.com]
When Kabila tried to reassert local control over the DRC’s mining industry, he was assassinated, and a Rwandan quisling, Hyppolite Kanambe (aka Joseph Kabila), was put in power.
Laurent Kabila. A one-time ally of Che Guevara who went to Congo in the mid-1960s to support a rebellion against Joseph Mobutu, Kabila was murdered after he took steps to assert DRC national control over its economic resources. His replacement, Hyppolite Kanambe (aka Joseph Kabila) enabled Western plunder of the DRC. [Source: aljazeera.com]Hyppolite Kanambe [Source: africanfederation.net]
The central resistance to foreign invasion in the DRC was the Mai-Mai militia, which was grouped with other militias by Western media, who in obscuring the real roots of the Congo war, reinforced racist stereotypes of Africans as savages.
Snow’s writings followed in the tradition of CovertAction Information Bulletin founder Philip Agee in his focus on political-economy and the intricate ties between big business, the CIA and White House in fomenting violent conflicts and economic plunder around the world.
Agee’s 1975 book Inside the Company emphasized how corporate plutocrats used the CIA to do the dirty work that would enable them to seize control over natural resources across the so-called Third World.
Snow’s writings on Sudan showed how the U.S. launched a three decades-long low-intensity warfare campaign beginning in the mid-1980s after the downfall of U.S. client Jaafar Nimeiri. The latter’s replacement, Omar al-Bashir, ended USAID operations in Sudan that had resulted in the cheap export of gum arabic, a resource, essential for soft drinks (Coke, Pepsi, Fanta) and beer, over which Sudan has a near monopoly.
Gertler headed an interlocking network of diamond companies, including Emaxon Finance International, which won the majority rights to the diamonds from the DRC’s state mining company, Société Minière de Bakwanga, MIBA.
Gertler’s access to the U.S. political elite came through Condoleezza Rice, who was friendly with a Brooklyn-born rabbi, Chaim Yaakov Leibovitch, to whom he was devoted.
Snow suggested that Gertler—who finances right-wing Israeli politicians—bribed Congolese and Angolan officials to protect his mining interests and was so close with Hyppolite Kanambe that he was one of only two white men invited to his wedding.
Emaxon Finance International, according to Snow, hid much of its ill-gotten gains in offshore “tax havens” that helped to “shield from prosecution people who are responsible for money laundering, weapons and drugs operations, assassinations and other terrorism.”
The Responsibility of Intellectuals—and Celebrities
Among other things, Snow’s writings are significant in pointing to the corruption of the journalistic and academic establishments, which have often parroted the RPF line of events and helped suppress the truth about U.S. foreign policy in Africa.
Snow’s review of a book on the murder of former Rwanda intelligence chief Patrick Karegeya by Paul Kagame characteristically criticized a well-known New York Times writer, Howard W. French, for regurgitating what Snow called the false “Cattle-Herding-Tutsis-as-Victims-of-Hoe-Happy-Hutu-Killers narrative.”
The same review castigated Joshua Hammer for assaulting the truth in a hit piece in The New York Times Magazine directed against Rwandan dissident Paul Rusesabagina (aka Mr. Hotel Rwanda) who was kidnapped and imprisoned for criticizing Kagame.[13]
Calling Hammer “an unabashed apologist for mass murder [who] actively promulgated anti-Hutu …disinformation in support of the genocide against Hutu people,” Snow points out that Hammer failed to disclose to his readers a close relationship with the RPF whose propaganda he was helping to regurgitate.
Snow felt that Hammer was an operative for the CIA or Mossad—or both. Hammer’s New York Times Magazine article was so bad that Dr. Brian Endless, a professor at Loyola University Chicago who had worked with Rusesabagina, emailed the editor to tell him that he had been misquoted, stating “Joshua interviewed me and many other people affiliated with Paul Rusesabagina, plus a number of journalists and academic experts. He clearly ignored all of our input, and instead told the story that has been put out since shortly after the terrible 1994 genocide by the propaganda machine of Rwandan President Paul Kagame.”
Snow’s writings also took aim at Dr. Eric Reeves, a professor at Smith College and so-called anti-genocide activist who functioned as a propagandist for the SPLA and was an open proponent of low-intensity warfare and U.S. regime-change operations in Sudan.[14]
Additional writings of Snow took aim at Philip Gourevitch, Howard Buffett, Andrew Young, Ben Affleck, Paul Farmer, Samantha Power, George Clooney, Rick Warren, and many other Western writers and celebrities who advanced pro-RPF and U.S. State Department views on the Rwandan and other African conflicts.
Snow made a point of emphasizing how U.S. humanitarian aid programs were often integrated into larger foreign policy initiatives that had resulted in gross humanitarian crises.
Humanitarian aid could be used as a cover for weapons supplies and other political support and was usually channeled to groups supported by the U.S., UK and Israel, and withheld from victims of Western imperialism like the Hutu.
What Snow called the NGO industry was also destructive because it inhibited the growth of progressive social movements and grassroots initiatives and fostered dependency on Westerners.
Snow’s writings cast critical attention on celebrity spokesmen for UN agencies that insidiously worked to advance the Pentagon’s interests. This occurred while fueling what he called the “misery industry” by which Americans are compelled to give money to private charities as they remain oblivious about the special interests and political structures driving all the misery.
Some of these celebrities, like Ben Affleck, who became very close with Paul Kagame’s family and met in Central Africa with Laurent Nkunda, a Rwandan militia leader implicated in gross human rights crimes in the DRC, openly advanced propaganda for U.S. client states.
Ben Affleck and murderous dictator Paul Kagame. [Source: facebook.com]
Others helped promote CIA cutout organizations like Save Darfur, which were designed to coopt efforts at grassroots oppositional/anti-imperialist movements in the West, while channeling student activist energy toward support for U.S.-aligned groups like the SPLA in Sudan.[15]
Snow outed Save Darfur founder John Prendergast (with Eric Reeves) as a U.S. intelligence operative who, working for intelligence front groups like ENOUGH, Genocide Intervention Network and Raise Hope for Congo, was active in promoting subversion across Africa in alignment with the interests of U.S. multi-national corporations.
Prendergast presents himself publicly as a hippie-type do-gooder who cares about the plight of African children when, in reality, he is a nefarious “deep-state” operative with much blood on his hands, who boasted of traveling across Central Africa with Paul Kagame.[16]
According to Snow, another perceived do-gooder with blood on her hands is Hollywood A-list actress Angelina Jolie, who starred as a “selfless” hero working as a UNHCR official in Hollywood’s Beyond Borders, which was in reality “a film that peddles the necessity of mixing Central Intelligence Agency gun-running operations with humanitarian missions—because it is ostensibly for the ‘right’ cause: Western-sponsored covert interventions.”[17]
Keith Harmon Snow was a hidden gem in the corrupt world of modern-day journalism, human rights NGOs and academia, who cared about humanity deeply and spoke truth to power.
Though Snow is no longer with us, his writings are accessible on the internet. They should be consulted by anyone who seeks a better understanding of the horrific consequences of U.S. foreign policy in Africa and wants to know more about the wealthy plutocrats who are behind it.
Jeremy Kuzmarov holds a Ph.D. in American history from Brandeis University and has taught at numerous colleges across the United States. He is regularly sought out as an expert on U.S. history and politics for radio and TV programs and co-hosts a radio show on New York Public Radio and on Progressive Radio News Network called “Left on Left.” He is Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine and is the author of five books on U.S. foreign policy, including Obama’s Unending Wars (Clarity Press, 2019), The Russians Are Coming, Again, with John Marciano (Monthly Review Press, 2018), and Warmonger. How Clinton’s Malign Foreign Policy Launched the U.S. Trajectory From Bush II to Biden (Clarity Press, 2023). Besides these books, Kuzmarov has published hundreds of articles and contributed to numerous edited volumes, including one in the prestigious Oxford History of Counterinsurgency . He can be reached at jkuzmarov2@gmail.com and found on substack here.
I recently had the honour of an interview with OBN Horn of Africa on President Trump`s re-election and what this entails for Africa. We discussed Ethiopia`s Green Legacy Initiative, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam ( GERD), nuclear energy and much more
Source: OBN Horn of Africa
Special edition
28 Jan 2025
USA seems more conservative under trump administration: PD Lawton
In 2025, Somalia & Ethiopia Must Move Forward With Economic Integration
American Analyst Says Ethiopia Can Spearhead Economic Integration in East Africa
January 6, 2025
Addis Ababa January 3, 2025, interview by Ethiopian News Agencywith Lawrence Freeman
Ethiopia can spearhead regional economic integration in East Africa by leveraging its growing economy and focusing on poverty reduction, the American political and economic analyst Laurence Freeman told ENA.
With about 120 million people, Ethiopia has the potential to use its economic growth to spread integration to the rest of the region and raise the standard of living in neighboring countries, he added.
US-West Rules Based Order In Denial Regarding BRICS & Africa
Interview with OBN-Horn Africa on November 15, 2024
November 29, 2024
The BRICS and Global South are a new reality in the multi-polar world that cannot be reversed or eliminated. It is a new paradigm based on development, not militarization. Is the West, with it so called rules-based order suffering from dementia or denial in refusing to face this new reality-this new dynamic changing the world?
Africa, with potentially six member nations in the BRICS will be in an excellent position to improve the living conditions of hundreds of millions of Africans. China, a leader in the BRICS and Global South has lifted over 700 million Chinese out of poverty. They have PROVEN it can be done with the right policies, which can be applied to Africa with 450 million still living in poverty. The Bretton Woods system and the rules-based order have failed Africa and the Global South. In the interests of the common aims of humankind, they should join the BRICS, and help develop all nations and the 8.5. billion people living on this planet.
