After Sudan achieved independence in 1956, Egypt decided to control the flow of Nile water that reached its own territory by building a dam and creating a reservoir —the Aswan Dam and Nasser Lake. The Sudan military government under President Nimeiri revived the plan in 1979, now with the intention of producing hydroelectricity for Sudan's rising demand. The following decade saw international industry and planning offices busy, producing a total of four feasibility studies [1 - Coyne et Bellier, 1979 / Gibb, Merz & McLellan, GB, 1983 / Sweco, SE, 1984 / Monenco Consultants Ltd., CA, 1989]. However, insufficient funding and lack of investor interest effectively stalled the project at the planning stage. This appears to have changed fundamentally since the country started exporting oil in commercial quantities in the years 1999/2000. A greatly improved creditworthiness brought an influx of foreign investment, and the contracts for the construction of what is now known as the Merowe Dam project were signed in 2002 and 2003. The main contractors are: China International Water&Electric Corp., China National Water Resources and Hydropower Engineering Corp. (construction of dam, hydromechanical works) Lahmeyer International (Germany - planning, project management, civil engineering) Alstom (France - generators, turbines) Harbin Power Engineering Company, Jilin Province Transmission and Substation Project Company (both China - transmission system extension) By the time the contracts were signed, the Merowe Dam had been the largest international project the Chinese industry ever participated in. River diversion and work on the concrete dams began in early 2004. The left river channel was closed on 30 December 2005; the project timeline scheduled the reservoir impounding to start in mid-2006 and the first generating unit to go on-line in mid-2007. The dam was inaugurated on March 3, 2009, at which point the reservoir was full and all the hydro-electric generating capacity on-line. Financing The total project cost is reported to be $2.945 billion. This can be subdivided into partial amounts for the construction work on the dam itself (ca. 45%), its technical equipment (ca. 25%) and the necessary upgrade of the power transmission system (ca. 30%). The project receives funding from China Import Export Bank - USD 608 million Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development – USD 477 million Saudi Fund for Development – USD 215 million Abu Dhabi Fund for Development – USD 210 million Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development – USD 200 million Oman Fund