Tanzania begins filling Egyptian-built Julius Nyerere dam

Tanzania on Thursday held the inaugural filling of the Egyptian-built Julius Nyerere dam, with Cairo's foreign affairs and housing ministers attending the ceremony.

The dam on the Rufiji River in south-east Tanzania, in one of the world’s largest nature reserves, was constructed by Elsewedy Electric, a private company, and the Arab Contractors, a state-owned company.

The Tanzanian government said the project cost $3 billion but estimates put the figure far higher once with peripheral expenses.

Egypt's foreign ministry said the completion of the dam and its hydroelectric power station were of “great interest” to the country.

“We join the Tanzanian leadership, government and people in their celebration of this very important event for our brothers in the United Republic of Tanzania,” the Egyptian delegation at the ceremony said in the ministry’s statement.

A project to build a dam on a stretch of the Rufiji called Stiegler’s Gorge, named after a German engineer killed by an elephant in 1907 while measuring the chasm for an infrastructure plan, has been planned since the 1960s.