Professor of Geology and Water Resources at the Cairo University Abbas Sharaky said that Ethiopia has been exposed to earthquakes for the fifth time in a row, with the latest measuring 4.9 on Richter scale on Sunday.
It hit at 8:10 pm Cairo time, with a depth of 10 km, roughly 560 km from the Grand Ethiopia Renaissance Dam.
Sharaky explained that the earthquake occurred near the four earthquakes that occurred on September 27 and 30 in the Ethiopian Rift Valley (the Great African Rift Valley), the most seismically active region on the African continent.
The Professor of Geology confirmed that seismic activity in Ethiopia has increased threefold over the past three years, from five to ten earthquakes annually during 2014-2020, to 38 earthquakes in 2023, the most severe of which measured 5.6.
There have been 20 earthquakes so far in 2024, he added.
He expected that seismic activity in Ethiopia, especially in the GERD area, will continue to increase after the filling was completed at about 60 billion m3, due to the weight of the lake reservoir at 60 billion tons, and 150 million tons of the weight of the two main dams and the saddle dam.
Sharaky also predicted that the leakage from part of the GERD through the connected ground cracks in most Ethiopian land would lead to more landslides, and thus further earthquakes.
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