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Africa

Foreign powers and IGOs have frequently used hydropower projects in Africa as a tool to interfere in the economic development of African countries, such as the World Bank with the Kariba and Akosombo Dams, and the Soviet Union with the Aswan Dam. The Nile River especially has borne the consequences of countries both along the Nile and distant foreign actors using the river to expand their economic power or national force. After the British occupation of Egypt in 1882, the British worked with Egypt to construct the first Aswan Dam, which they heightened in 1912 and 1934 to try to hold back the Nile floods. Egyptian engineer Adriano Daninos developed a plan for the Aswan High Dam, inspired by the Tennessee Valley Authority's multipurpose dam.

When Gamal Abdel Nasser took power in the 1950s, his government decided to undertake the High Dam project, publicizing it as an economic development project. After American refusal to help fund the dam, and anti-British sentiment in Egypt and British interests in neighboring Sudan combined to make the United Kingdom pull out as well, the Soviet Union funded the Aswan High Dam. Between 1977 and 1990 the dam's turbines generated one third of Egypt's electricity. The building of the Aswan Dam triggered a dispute between Sudan and Egypt over the sharing of the Nile, especially since the dam flooded part of Sudan and decreased the volume of water available to them. Ethiopia, also located on the Nile, took advantage of the Cold War tensions to request assistance from the United States for their own irrigation and hydropower investments in the 1960s. While progress stalled due to the coup d'état of 1974 and following 17-year-long Ethiopian Civil War Ethiopia began construction on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam in 2011.

Beyond the Nile, hydroelectric projects cover the rivers and lakes of Africa. The Inga powerplant on the Congo River had been discussed since Belgian colonization in the late 19th century, and was successfully built after independence. Mobutu's government failed to regularly maintain the plants and their capacity declined until the 1995 formation of the Southern African Power Pool created a multi-national power grid and plant maintenance program. States with an abundance of hydropower, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ghana, frequently sell excess power to neighboring countries. Foreign actors such as Chinese hydropower companies have proposed a significant amount of new hydropower projects in Africa, and already funded and consulted on many others in countries like Mozambique and Ghana.

Small hydropower also played an important role in early 20th century electrification across Africa. In South Africa, small turbines powered gold mines and the first electric railway in the 1890s, and Zimbabwean farmers installed small hydropower stations in the 1930s. While interest faded as national grids improved in the second half of the century, 21st century national governments in countries including South Africa and Mozambique, as well as NGOs serving countries like Zimbabwe, have begun re-exploring small-scale hydropower to diversify power sources and improve rural electrification.