In September, rating organization Standard and Poor’s (S&P) Global has raised Ghana’s long-term foreign and local currency sovereign credit ratings to 'B' from 'B-'. According to S&P, “The stable outlook balances Ghana's fairly robust growth prospects, decreasing inflation, and narrower current account deficits against risks from still-high budget deficits and a high stock of public sector debt.”

In order Ghana continues its way to economic growth and prosperity, structural transformation of the economy in terms of increasing the share of manufacturing and industrial sectors to GDP is indispensable.

Ghana’s industrialization has gone through three phases: the state-led import substitution industrialization which lasted from 1960 to 1983, followed by the second phase focused on thestructural adjustment programmes of the international financial institutions to the local economy. 

Since 2000, during the third phase, the government has concentrated on private sector development, currently culminating in One-District-One-Factory programme. 1D1F policy look at which imports can be replaced by the local products creating jobs at the district level and use raw materials in those places. The initiative is an economic transformational agenda being spearheaded by the President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

Access to stable power supply used to be a major challenge faced by small and medium-scale enterprises in Ghana, but now cost of energy came in the forefront.

“Today, industry is not complaining about supply anymore. Since last year the problem has been the cost; the cost of energy has been a big issue, it is expensive if you compare to other countries,” said Seth Twum-Akwaboah, AGI’s Chief Executive Officer, speaking in an interview during the last day of the three-day Ghana Industrial Summit and Exhibition, which was on the theme ‘International partnerships for value-added industrial and local content development’.  

“Fortunately, this year we had some reductions – about 25 percent, which was very significant for businesses. But we still think that our energy cost is still high, especially because we are competing with other countries; and when you go those countries their energy cost is much lower, so therefore their production cost becomes lower and their price also becomes lower.

“And when they bring their goods into your market to compete with you, that is where the issue is. So, we need to have energy at competitive prices supplied in an efficient manner so that we can compete,” Mr. Twum-Akwaboah further explained.

According to the Center for Global Development, in the past decade, Ghana has experienced severe electricity supply challenges costing the nation an average of US $2.1 million in loss of production daily. This situation has developed even though installed generation capacity has more than doubled over the period; increasing from 1,730 MW in 2006 to 3,795 MW in 2016.

In the face of these challenges, however, Ghana could achieve universal access by the year 2020 with an annual electrification rate of about 4.38 percent. 82.5 percent of Ghana’s population had access to electricity by 2016. Solving Ghana’s electricity challenges would require measures including, but not limited to, diversifying the electricity generation mix through the development of clean sustainable energy sources such as nuclear and renewables, restructuring the tariff regime to ensure utilities can recover their cost of generation, and promoting energy efficiency programs.

Renewables are the best to meet peak demand for electricity, but being dependable on weather conditions they are insufficient to ensure baseload energy supply. In this case, nuclear energy development can be a perfect solution. Nuclear power is a cost-effective and reliable baseload power source. In countries that opted for nuclear energy it has ensured uninterrupted power supply for 60-80 years at a predictable price which does not depend on the volatility of global prices for energy resources. For instance, if the price of uranium doubles, the final cost of electricity generated by nuclear power will only increase by roughly 5%, which cannot be said about conventional energy sources.

Moreover that nuclear is not totally unfamiliar for Ghana. Although there are no NPPs in Ghana at this point, the country has a wealth of competences in the nuclear field. Ghana is successfully operating the GHARR-1 research reactor since December 1994 which is used for research and development, food preservation through irradiation with gamma rays, training and educational purposes. Ghana is just called to pursue its way toward economic growth with the help of the clean, reliable and affordable energy source as the nuclear energy is.