Two big events are unfolding as Ethiopia enters a new year: Africa Climate Summit (ACS2) and the inauguration of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).

Addis Ababa is dressed for እንቁጣጣሽ and for these momentous occasions: the streets of Bole and Piazza buzzing with visitors, buildings lit up with colorful flags, the whole scene evoking a real-life Wakanda — except powered by hydropower, not vibranium.

For outsiders, it’s exciting. Addis Ababa serves as a visible showcase of a modern African city running on renewable power (with little attention paid to what lies beyond city limits). For locals, the only consolation for the heavy traffic, likely a heavy military presence, is the brief reprieve from the usual frustrations of frequent blackouts disrupting work and home life.

Throughout ACS2, there will be much boasting about GERD, Ethiopia’s rapid transition to electric vehicles, maybe even nuclear power. But once the spotlight fades, Addis residents will return to the same reality — severe outages, increasing fuel and electricity costs, and weak power quality that damages devices and constrains daily life. In the midst of these big moments and contrasting realities, I can’t help but wonder: how do we shift from simply marking generation milestones to actually delivering power that drives industries and economies? 

Yes, Ethiopians Should Be Proud of GERD

Don’t get me wrong — GERD means that, after 15 years, Ethiopia has completed the continent’s largest hydropower project, a remarkable feat. Once fully operational, the 5 GW plant has the potential to provide low-cost, clean, and firm power and support both Ethiopia’s and East Africa’s growth ambitions.

And despite the Prime Minister’s claim that citizens contributed only a drop, or President Trump’s false claim that the US financed the project, Ethiopians know the truth: their contributions and sacrifice financed a project that was rejected by the global multilateral institutions.

Celebrating GERD alongside ACS2, a precursor to COP30, is a timely reminder of hydropower’s often overlooked role in the clean energy conversation.

But Growth Requires Affordable, Reliable Power — Not Just New Capacity

Despite the achievement GERD represents, it still doesn’t guarantee that Ethiopia will have ample, affordable power for robust economic growth. Indeed, while Ethiopia has some of the lowest electricity tariffs in the region, its grid is still plagued by outages that drive up costs for commercial consumers. In 2019, the Energy for Growth Hub estimated these additional costs at nearly 300% of electricity prices for industrial customers. Poorly planned load-shedding events further compound the problem, causing significant economic losses by failing to meet demand. The recently released Ethiopian Energy Outlook reports that at least 25% of the country’s installed generation capacity is inactive due to maintenance issues and hard currency shortages. According to Ethiopian Electric Utility’s own statistics, large-scale users experience an average of 39 interruptions per month, lasting a total of 21 hours. Earlier this year, the capital experienced severe outages with over 25,000 problems recorded.

Research across Asia and Africa shows that unreliable power undermines productivity, disrupts production, and cuts revenue. It all adds up to more expensive everyday goods, life and economic activities, ultimately suppressing growth. In Ethiopia, where unreliable and unaffordable power remains a major drag on growth, none of these problems can be solved by simply adding capacity.

Will GERD Benefit Everyone — Or Mostly Crypto?

And early beneficiaries of GERD may not be local citizens. Amid the celebrations, overly rosy political claims that GERD will power the entire country are running rampant — misleading the public and obscuring the real decision-making process.

In truth, a significant share of GERD’s output is allocated to crypto-mining data centers: lucrative in the short term and useful for financing, but operations that create few jobs and can easily relocate when prices no longer suit them. Assessing the public value of such offtakers is especially difficult in a context where power procurement lacks transparency.

With Ethiopia scoring just 3 out of 10 on power purchase agreement transparency, we should ask serious questions about whether public funds are indirectly subsidizing crypto activity instead of supporting demands with broader and more lasting economic benefits.

How to Move from Building Capacity to Powering Development

For Ethiopia’s genuine development, GERD celebrations must be a moment to:

Move the metric from megawatts to meaningful development. Ribbon cuttings and large project commissions are easy to celebrate, but electricity is a means to a development end. And even with GERD coming online and the wet season in Ethiopia underway, businesses and households still endure prolonged blackouts, damage to appliances, additional cost due to backup power and economic losses. That’s why celebrating generation projects alone is misleading; it prevents us from diagnosing and addressing the crushing cost of unreliable power. It’s time to shift the metric: from megawatts added to income generated, jobs created, and living standards improved through reliable, affordable power.

Demand power procurement transparency and clear evaluation of offtaker trade-offs. Would GERD be better used to power local factories, sell into the regional power pool, or attract more strategic demand centers such as battery manufacturing? What are the terms and prices of these crypto deals, and could Ethiopia secure stronger alternatives? Is the country prioritizing quick foreign currency inflows over carefully weighing long-term trade-offs? This lack of transparency ultimately drives up debt, delays projects, and deters investors and credible offtakers. It squanders the opportunity to make deliberate policy choices about which demand centers to prioritize, why, and for how long.

Power contract transparency can change that — and the first step is for Ethiopia to publish its existing power purchase agreements, with key terms disclosed, so demand choices can be properly evaluated and debated.

Ultimately, the real test for GERD must be delivered growth.

Ethiopian residents and businesses are already enduring so much: civil war and insecurity, displacement, hunger and aid withdrawal, inflation, soaring costs of goods, rising property taxes, debt restructuring, and now escalating electricity prices paired with worsening power reliability. In such times, it matters to celebrate wins — and GERD is certainly a big one.

But we must keep our eyes on the prize: energy is only valuable when it drives growth, and growth is the foundation for a climate-resilient country and continent. That means the measure of success cannot stop at megawatts added — it must include the policies, demand decisions, the procurement terms, and the reliable service that turns power into jobs, income, and better lives, with leaders held accountable for delivering them.