Nana Amoasi VII, the Executive Director of the Institute for Energy Security (IES), has intimated that for Ghana to reach its 100 per cent electricity access target by 2025, it has to grow access by about 3 per cent on a yearly basis.

Access to electricity has increased significantly over the past two decades from 45 per cent to 86 per cent in 2020. By its revised target, the government expects to reach universal electricity access by 2025.

Notwithstanding this ambition, the IES Exec. Director opined that the country could have been closer to the previous target if “we… maintained the average annual growth rate of 2.7 per cent between 2010 and 2016.

“Over the last four years, Ghana has failed to increase annual electricity access growth by more than 0.6 percent, hence our inability to meet the 100 percent target by end 2020. At end 2016, the access rate stood at 83.2 per cent.
“We then have to grow access by roughly 3 per cent on an annual basis going forward. The country may not be able to achieve this target by the new set year if we maintain the business-as-usual approach.”
Nana Amoasi VII

Along these lines, Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh is cited to have said that “Government is assiduously pursuing measures to increase the share of renewable energy in our electricity generation mix”.

Cost and Reliability remain big hurdles in the power sector

Against this backdrop, the International Energy Agency’s (IEAs) 2020 World Energy Outlook database, 93 per cent of the country’s population living in urban areas have access to electricity. Comparatively, the proportion of the populace with access to electricity in rural areas is about 75 per cent.

Additionally, the number of people without access to electricity in Ghana is about 5 million, representing about 14 per cent of the population. Ghana’s electricity access rate of 86 percent is above rates of peers like Nigeria with roughly 62 percent of electricity access.

Rural electrification has seen vast improvement over the years. Owing to the fact that, the government through off-grid and on-grid electricity generation, mainly renewable energy technologies, has increased rural electrification rates as well as access.

While commendable, an assessment of electricity cost in the country reveals prices going through the roof. Compared with West African peers, the cost of electricity in Ghana ranges from US$0.11-0.20; whereas that of its neighbor, Cote d’Ivoire ranges from US$0.9-0.12 per Kilo-Watt hour (KWh); Nigeria (US$0.7-0.11 per KWh); Benin (US$0.17-0.19 per KWh); Togo (US$0.16-0.18 per KWh).

In addition, reliability of electricity supply also raises concerns, as power outages (dumsor) was one of the nightmares of businesses in 2016. Recently, the frequent load shedding experienced early this year temporarily destabilized productive activities of businesses.

Considering a continent-wide assessment, the number of people gaining access to electricity doubled from 9 million a year between 2000 and 2013 to 20 million people between 2014 and 2019.

However, a vast majority of the African populace, that is, around 579 million were without access to electricity as at 2019, declining from 610 million in 2013.