Energy Minister John Abdulai Jinapor has disclosed that Ghana’s ongoing power challenges go beyond the recent Akosombo fire, pointing to a deeper structural problem involving ageing and failing electricity infrastructure across the country.
Speaking at a government accountability forum, Mr Jinapor described the country’s electricity sector as facing a “two-pronged challenge” involving both the immediate disruption from the Akosombo Hydroelectric Plant fire and long-standing technical weaknesses in the distribution network.
“The second is the technical challenges we faced based on obsolete equipment, overloaded transformers, and transformers that have been failing,” he said.
The minister’s remarks suggest that while the fire at Akosombo has triggered widespread outages in recent days, underlying infrastructure issues have also been affecting the stability of supply for some time.
Mr Jinapor did not provide figures on how many transformers are affected or specify the areas most impacted. However, his comments point to persistent weaknesses in Ghana’s transmission and distribution systems that predate the current crisis.
The Energy Minister also revealed that ECG’s expenditure has been significantly reduced this year, from about GH¢9.3 billion in 2024 to GH¢1.8 billion in 2025, as part of efforts to prioritise critical infrastructure and improve financial discipline in the sector.
However, it remains unclear whether the reduced spending has directly targeted transformer replacement or broader system upgrades.
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