High Dam Aswan, Egypt, is a mega construction designed in 1956 that began construction in 1959 and ended in 1970, taking approximately 10 years of development. This dam is the third-largest reservoir in the world and holds the Nile River, considered the longest in the world.
Before the construction of a dam in Aswan, Egypt was experiencing annual flooding of the Nile River that deposited 4 million tons of sediment-rich nutrients to support agricultural production. In 1989, a first dam, known as the Lower Aswan Dam, was built, but it proved insufficient in the face of rising Nile flows. In 1946, the real danger became apparent when the water in the reservoir reached its maximum at the top of the dam and it was decided to build a second dam 8 kilometers upstream of the river.
That is why the dam to prevent flooding and safeguard the Egyptian territory, the dam was built at 111 meters above sea level. It has a length of 480 km, a maximum width of 16 km, and a storage capacity between 150 and 165 km3. On 26 July 1956, the Egyptian nationalist leader Gamal Abdel Nasser announced, during a speech in Alexandria, his wish to nationalize the Suez Canal. The leader was pursuing several objectives with the initiative, but the most important was to obtain funding to build the Aswan Dam, which would control the flow of the Nile and improve the country’s economy.
