In 1947, Charles Redvers Westlake, an English engineer, reported to the Colonial Government of Uganda recommending the construction of a hydroelectric dam at Owen Falls near the city of Jinja.

A treaty between Uganda and Egypt ensured that the dam would not alter the natural flow of the Nile.

[4] The Uganda Government, through the Uganda Electricity Generation Company (UEGCL), a 100 percent parastatal, awarded a 20-year operational, management and maintenance concession to Eskom Uganda Limited, a subsidiary of Eskom, the South African energy company, to cover both Nalubaale Power Station and the adjacent Kiira Power Station.

[7] In September the same year, Sinohydro Corporation Limited completed renovations to the dam's structure.

The repairs that lasted nearly one year, were meant to stop water leakages due to "deterioration of grout curtain".

Since January 2006, hydroelectric generation at Nalubaale and Kiira stations has been curtailed due to a prolonged drought and low level of water in Lake Victoria.

[11] In 2006 there was a release of secret documents from 1956 in Britain that indicated the British had considered using this dam to reduce the water in the Nile in an effort to remove Egyptian President Nasser.

The plan was not carried out because it would have seasonally flooded land in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, reduced flows to a trickle in Sudan and the effect of shutting off the White Nile even to coincide with the seasonal lull in the Blue Nile would not have affected Egypt for at least 16 months.

The countries along the White Nile excluding Sudan seek to create a unified international legal framework for the basin and for the time being respect keeping lake levels virtually unaltered so as not to upset their own eco-systems and established patterns of crop production and livestock raising.

[13] In October 2024, Jan Sadek, the ambassador of the European Union to Uganda, announced an economic package valued at €170 million (UGX:680 billion), to rehabilitate, stabilize and prolong the life of both Nalubaale and Kiira dams.

The remaining €140 million is a concessional loan from the European Investment Bank and the French Development Agency (FDA).