Electricity in Ghana, July 2013

Electricity in Ghana, July 2013

Well, since I am still in Ghana and the information is readily available from the authorities, I might as well take advantage of the situation.

I had a face-to-face meeting with the most senior information officer at the Ministry of Energy, and here is what I was provided. I am putting it this way because, what is being generated and the demand, do NOT balance out.

There is currently a hydro dam under construction with three turbine generators, one came on-board in June 2013 (delivering 133MW), and another is suppose to come on-board July 2013 (delivering 133MW), with the last one coming on-board in September 2013 (to deliver 133MW). As of this writing, July 28, 2013; the July 2013 unit has not come on-board.

Anyway, with the one unit in June2013, the Grand Total being generated from hydro, thermal, and solar sources amount to a little more than 2478 Megawatts. And the daily demand as I was told is 1850MW, with 50MW of this figure going as export to Togo and Benin. If this is so, there should not be a blackout (and the authorities are calling it load shedding) of any kind because there is a net power output of more than 628MW on any given day. But there is blackout (or “dumso” in the local lingo) through July 2013.

If you are planning on doing any business in Ghana, and you think you will need electricity around the clock, my best advice is to have a Standby generator.

My personal observation and conclusion is that, there seem to be a little more of the cheetahs running around in Ghana than the Hippos, but still, there are hippos in this environment.

Is it too little too late??

Is it too little too late???

Please accept my profound apology for the long absence. I have been away from my US base, and I am now in Accra, Ghana, West Africa.

What prompted me to resurface at this time? It is very simple, I have been in Ghana for almost three years now, and the luxury of gathering facts from inside Africa in order to put it in my blog is a bit difficult and expensive. The land-line phone system in Ghana is nothing to write home about, to put it mildly; and the wireless modem method (which is what I am using now) is very expensive because everything is measured by the gigabyte of downloads.

But let us go to why I am writing now. Africa, over the last 10 years or so, have been abandoned by the “West”. And before anybody jumps on my back or neck and says, the West does not owe Africa anything, let us remember the old say, ‘He who pays the piper calls the tune”.

China, has entrenched herself all over Africa in the last 10 years or so with either free money, or interest-free loan.  Speaking specifically about Ghana, interest-free loan to build hydro power at Bui in the Brong Ahafo Region (the project is almost complete) has resulted in an additional 150 or so megawatts of electricity being injected into the emaciated arm of Ghana.

Recently, Ghana deported 167 or so Illegal gold miners to China, then last week another 1072 were deported, folks that is almost one thousand two hundred Chinese from only one country in Africa. These Chinese are from just one specific area in Eastern China (and last year exported one Billion US dollars illegally to China).

Ghana has been going through something called “dumso” (pronounce “dum sor”). This means ‘off and on ‘ in one of the local languages. The question is, why is the electricity going off and on, because for those who know something about the Bible and the New Testament,  the question is,“are you your brothers’ keeper”? Toga and Benin CANNOT support themselves, and rely on Ghana for electricity; hence the rotating blackout in Ghana. The management of ECG in Ghana (electricity company of Ghana) is calling it load-shedding, it should be call “forced rotating BLACKOUT” because Ghanaians have been taking care of their brothers for years in this respect.

Let us hop over to DR Congo and the Grand Inga Hydro project; the funding here again is China. He or she who pays the piper, calls the tune. For the benefit of those who do not know, this is supposed to be the largest hydro project in the world when completed, and it is supposed to more than double the electricity supply in Africa (south of the Sahara when completed).

The question is, why all of a sudden US president Obama is offering to put 7 billion US dollars into Africa to light her up??