The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) project, lauched in 2011, has reached 97.6% completion and requires an additional 80 billion Birr (about 630 million USD) to complete the remaining construction work, according to the GERD Project Coordination Office.
To put this into perspective, the original total budget for the GERD project was estimated at 80 billion Birr. And that 2.4% of the remaining work includes work on critical parts of the GERD, such as turbine commissioning process.
The GERD Project Coordination Office has set a goal of raising 1.6 billion Birr from public contributions this year to help address the funding gap. Over 20.2 billion Birr has been collected through bond sales from the public to date.
This funding gap comes at a time when Ethiopia is still recovering from the Tigray war and is embroiled in an ongoing civil war between the federal government and anti-federal government forces, namely the Oromo Liberation Army, the Amhara militia forces known as Fano and various other armed gropus.
In addition, the predominantly Somali-populated region of Ethiopia, Ogaden, takes up federal government resources. Amid the ongoing civil war in Somalia, IS Somalia has been able to recruit hundreds of members, including Ethiopians. Ethiopia's relations with the Federal Government of Somalia are also not ideal due to Ethiopia's support for the breakaway region of Somaliland, which also requires resources to support.
On the other hand, there are gridlocked negotiations with Sudan and Egypt. The mechanism of the operation with the dam had not yet been agreed with Egypt, and the Sudanese army has accumulated a plethora of grievances over Ethiopia's reaction to the ongoing civil war.
Given all these problems, raising such a large sum to complete the dam and get it fully operational requires a huge strain on Ethiopia's resources - economic, political, military, and so on. But this titanic project has been a priority for every Ethiopian government for a reason, and you can be sure that the current government will try to finally complete it.