The Executive Director of the Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP), Benjamin Boakye, says Ghana’s power challenges go beyond isolated incidents like transformer faults or the recent fire at Akosombo.

Speaking on JoyNews’ Newsfile, Benjamin Boakye explained that the core issue is the weakness of the entire system.

“We don’t have a robust power system that assures everybody that we can meet the benchmark,” he said.

He noted that outages in communities will continue because the system cannot guarantee stable supply across the board.

According to him, events like the Akosombo substation fire only expose deeper problems.

“Taking down 1000 megawatts, there’s no way you will not have load shedding,” he stated.

He added that routine technical work, such as replacing transformers, should not be mistaken as the main cause of the crisis.

“As for fixing transformers and changing them, those are routine things that should be done in any power system,” he said.


Benjamin Boakye maintained that the focus should be on strengthening generation and transmission infrastructure to avoid large-scale disruptions.

“The big ticket interventions at generation and substations must be managed so that we don’t take down vast areas at a go,” he said.

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