Ethiopia backed African liberation movements especially the African National Congress in South Africa by offering refuge, military training, and even an Ethiopian passport to Nelson Mandela during apartheid. Through the Organization of African Unity, it provided diplomatic, financial, and logistical support across the continent, helping legitimize anti-colonial struggles from South Africa 🇿🇦 to Somalia 🇸🇴 solidarity some say has since been met with hostility toward Ethiopian migrants in South Africa.
*Sigh.* No, it's not. And this whole clip is idiotic.🤦♂️
Ethiopians never called their nation Abyssinia. The word is a English corruption of the ancient name for a people in the north, HABASHAT. In fact Aksum's Ezana corrected the word Habashat to Ethiopia in a diplomatic letter.
Dear Eritrean Friends,
We Ethiopians genuinely sympathize with the painful legacy of colonization that scarred your nation under Fascist Italy. We understand that such trauma can wound a people’s collective identity for generations. But empathy for your history does not mean tolerating the fabrication of ours.
Ethiopia has never been colonized - not yesterday, not today, not ever. The brief Italian military occupation of Addis Ababa during our war of resistance was not colonization, It was a battlefield setback in an active war of resistance in which our forefathers were actively fighting back. If mere occupation equals colonization, then by your logic, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway were “colonies” of Nazi Germany - a notion both absurd and historically false.
Let’s be clear: when your ancestors served as askaris for the Fascist invaders, ours were sacrificing their lives at Maichew and beyond to preserve Africa’s only uncolonized civilization. That difference is written in blood and history not opinion.
What you are attempting - to rewrite our legacy to soothe your own national insecurities is a classic case of narcissistic rivalry ;- devaluing what you envy to mask your own inferiority. It’s beneath you, and it’s futile.
Instead of reliving humiliation through false comparisons, focus on building a new chapter of strength and dignity for your nation. Ethiopians do not seek to humiliate you, we simply refuse to let anyone ( friend or foe ) to distort the truth of who we are.
Heal by building, not by trying to tear us down. Forge a proud Eritrean future instead of rewriting ours. Ethiopia’s history needs no revision - it needs only to be read.
History is not a competition of pain. But facts are not negotiable.
Sincerely yours - a proud Ethiopian (የጀግናው አያቱ የልጅ ልጅ)
The Utopia of Ethiopia 🇪🇹
A country that was never coIonized, the birthplace of coffee and home to mighty #GERD.
The most populous landlocked country in the world runs on a unique calendar, and today marks the first day of its 2018 New Year.
An interesting thread🧵on Ethiopia.
Ethiopia 🇪🇹 uses its own ancient calendar — the Ethiopian calendar — which is closely related to the Coptic calendar and traces its roots to the older Alexandrian (Egyptian) system. Here’s a clear breakdown of its history:
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1. Origins in Ancient Egypt
•The Ethiopian calendar evolved from the Alexandrian calendar, which itself derived from the ancient Egyptian solar calendar.
•The Coptic Church preserved this calendar after Christianity spread to Egypt in the 1st century CE.
•When Christianity reached Ethiopia in the 4th century CE (via the Kingdom of Aksum), Ethiopia adopted a similar calendar system.
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2. Structure of the Calendar
•13 months: 12 months of 30 days each, plus a 13th “small month” called Pagumē, which has 5 days (6 days in a leap year).
•The year starts on Mäskäräm 1 (around September 11th or 12th in the Gregorian calendar).
•This makes Ethiopia roughly 7–8 years behind the Gregorian calendar. For example, Ethiopia 🇪🇹 is entering the year 2018 in September 2025 Gregorian.
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3. Why the 7–8 Year Difference Exists
•The difference comes from an alternate calculation of the date of the Annunciation of Jesus.
•The Roman Catholic Church (and thus the Gregorian calendar) fixed the birth of Christ at 1 AD differently from the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.
•This led to Ethiopia’s calendar being 7–8 years “behind” the Gregorian system.
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4. Religious and Cultural Significance
•The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church uses the calendar for all its religious holidays and fasts.
•Major holidays (like Christmas — Genna, on January 7 Gregorian) and New Year (Enkutatash, on September 11/12 Gregorian) are all based on it.
•The continuity of this calendar is a point of cultural pride for Ethiopians, reflecting an unbroken link to antiquity.
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5. Modern Use
•Ethiopia’s government and society still use the Ethiopian calendar for day-to-day life, though international business also uses the Gregorian calendar.
•Many Ethiopians effectively navigate both calendars daily.
Countries around the world that have never been colonized by any European power:
1. Bhutan 🇧🇹
2. Thailand 🇹🇭
3. Japan 🇯🇵
4. Saudi Arabia 🇸🇦
5. Iran 🇮🇷
6. China 🇨🇳
7. Afghanistan 🇦🇫
8. Ethiopia 🇪🇹
9. Tonga 🇹🇴
10. Nepal 🇳🇵
11. Liberia 🇱🇷
12. Mongolia 🇲🇳
13. North Korea 🇰🇵
14. South Korea 🇰🇷
Precision, execution and unity delivered the GERD. A historic victory for Ethiopia, built by Ethiopians for generations to come.
#GERDInauguration#Ethiopia
GERD generates the equivalent of 4 large nuclear units
Come close and look with me. This is a live frame from GERD’s control room.
Total power reads 4,822.85 MW. Reactive power 93.09 MVAr. Flow tag 3,048.64 m³/s. Numbers, yes. But also a heartbeat.
What does that mean in plain words?
GERD’s roof is 5,150 MW. Right now we are just 327.15 MW under it - about 93.6% loaded. That is the plant running strong and steady, voltage tight, almost unity power factor. If you split the moment across all 13 Francis units, you get roughly 371 MW per unit. Some breathe a little lighter, some a little heavier - that is normal with head, efficiency, and grid limits.
About the flow tag on the screen.
If it were the total discharge, the implied head would be around 179 m, which is higher than GERD’s usual band. More likely it is the readout from one powerhouse or it excludes some units. Double it to about 6,100 m³/s and the implied head lands near 90-100 m, right where big Francis machines like to work. Either way, the power number is the truth. We are sitting near the ceiling.
Now, let’s make the size of 4,822.85 MW feel real.
• Picture Addis Ababa lit many times over. Addis peaks around 0.6-0.8 GW. This single reading is like powering 6-8 Addis Ababas at once.
• Think of Nairobi and its neighbors around 2 GW. GERD at this moment is more than double that.
• Think of London at 6-7 GW. We are at about two thirds of London’s peak.
• Think of New York City around 12-13 GW. We are at about one third of NYC’s glow.
• Or count homes. At roughly 1.3 kW per home, this instant lights about 3.7 million homes. At 1.0 kW, it is about 4.8 million homes. Hold this for 24 hours and you deliver around 116 GWh - enough for 3.9 million homes at 30 kWh/day, or 11.6 million at 10 kWh/day.
• Plant for plant, think 4 large nuclear units together, or about 10 big gas turbines.
Now, a question I know I will get: why not 5,150 MW every minute?
Because real operators keep headroom. A few percent of space for frequency control, temperature, vibration, line limits, and safe ramping. That is good practice, not weakness.
Let’s ask a second question: where does this power come from in the rhythm of the year?
From storage. From the Abay’s pulse. Long run, the river brings about 50 bcm each year. GERD’s normal lake band is ~625-640 m. We store during flood months and release steadily later. That is the job. That is why you cannot take one high minute and multiply by 8,760 hours to make an annual number.
Another scene people ask about is the crest spill.
At FSL 640 m the lake is full - roughly 74 bcm. When inflow nudges the top of the band, the ungated crest behaves like any weir and passes the extra gently into a lined, stepped chute and a stilling basin. That is the spillway doing what it was built to do. It is not uncontrolled overtopping. It is control.
Seatbelts are on too.
There is a continuity release so the river does not go dry. There is day-to-day ramp discipline to protect Roseires and the banks. There is monitoring and emergency coordination because this is a flagship plant, not a guessing game.
Let’s look at the national picture for a moment.
Before GERD, Ethiopia’s installed fleet was ~4.7-5.2 GW. Today’s single snapshot at ~4.82 GW is essentially the old entire system, concentrated in one station. If you want to see exactly how much the rest of the country is making right now, open Merkava and subtract 4,822.85 MW from the total. That number is the non-GERD share in that minute.
Machine sense-check for the engineers reading this:
At net head ~100 m and efficiency ~90%, one 400 MW unit needs about 453 m³/s, one 375 MW needs about 425 m³/s, and all 13 at nameplate would want around 5,833 m³/s. That is why we push harder in the wet months and ease in the dry months. That is the music of a storage plant.
Why 13 units?
Because a hub plant must cover peaks, keep n-1 reserve, rotate maintenance, capture seasonal surges, and support exports. A few units alone cannot do all that with resilience.
So what does this image really tell us?
It says the turbines are humming near full song. It says voltage is crisp. It says the lake is being managed inside its band and the spillway is ready to pass what it must. It says a single project now stands shoulder to shoulder with the grid we used to have as a country. For me, as an Ethiopian, that is pride. For readers who love numbers, that is 4,822.85 MW and a story of water turned into light.
#GERD #GrandEthiopianRenaissanceDam #Abay #BlueNile #NileBasin #Hydropower #CleanEnergy #PowerAfrica #Energy #Electricity #Infrastructure #Ethiopia #Egypt #Sudan #SouthSudan #Uganda #Kenya #Tanzania #Rwanda #Burundi #DRC #CongoDRC #Eritrea
Congratulations to the Ethiopian people on inauguration of the #GRED; it will be turning point to achieving Prosperity
We look forward to work with Ethiopian leaders to foster peace in the Horn of Africa.
The architecture of the Kingdom of Aksum/Axumite was just different. Underrated African Kingdom , once stretching from parts of Ethiopia and Eritrea into the South Arabia regions. 🇪🇹🇪🇷
The architect of the palace and obelisk are tremendously intriguing.
🇪🇹 The Dam Builder
From Gilgel Gibe I & II to the GERD, Simegnew Bekele devoted 33 years to harnessing Ethiopia’s rivers. Engineer, leader, patriot — his life was nation-building, his death a mystery, his legacy a monument in concrete & memory.
https://t.co/VMCIxQxb9M
Ethiopia 🇪🇹 made history today by opening the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), the biggest hydropower project in Africa.
The event was attended by African leaders. Built on the Blue Nile, the dam can produce 5,150 MW of electricity, about the same as three medium-sized nuclear plants.
This project will bring power to millions of Ethiopians and boost the country’s future.