An Egyptian leading construction company has won a tender to design and build a huge dam on Tanzania’s Rufiji River, the Egyptian presidency said in a statement on Sunday. The government-run Arab Contractors has been assigned to build Stiegler’s Gorge dam considered by Tanzania as one of the most important national projects for power generation, said Egyptian presidential spokesman Bassam Rady in the statement. Rady said Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi was invited in a phone call by his Tanzanian counterpart John Magufuli to lay the foundation stone of the planned hydroelectric dam. “The dam construction will be done in a way that brings pride to Egypt, Tanzania and Africa,” Sisi told Magufuli, stressing that it will be a model for cooperation between African states. The two leaders hailed the bilateral relations between Egypt and Tanzania, as well as the prospects of further economic cooperation. Tanzania and Egypt share the Nile River along with nine other Nile Basin countries including Ethiopia, which is currently building a giant dam named the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, raising concerns from Egypt, a downstream country, about its annual share of the Nile water. Xinhua
