• Ghana to build 1,200 MW gas-fired plant, groundbreaking by end 2026

• Rising electricity demand drives expansion; peak consumption hits 4,300 MW

• Project aims to boost supply, exports amid sector debt and grid vulnerabilities

Ghana will construct a 1,200-megawatt gas-fired power plant. President John Dramani Mahama announced the project on Saturday, May 2, during a citizen outreach tour of the Eastern Region called "Resetting Ghana," according to MyJoyOnline. He said groundbreaking would take place before the end of 2026.

“Looking at how the country is growing, the consumption of electricity is growing. When we came to power, the consumption was 3,500 megawatts but currently the consumption at peak has gotten to 4,300 megawatts," Mahama said.

He added that the increase has been driven by higher investment and economic activity, requiring additional capacity to ensure a stable and reliable supply to the grid.

Finance Minister Cassiel Ato Forson had already outlined the project as part of the 2026 budget, before Parliament in November 2025. He said at the time that the plant would be fueled by an additional 150 million standard cubic feet of gas per day, sourced from partners in the offshore Jubilee and OCTP fields through the accelerated development of the Ghana Gas Processing Plant 2 (GPP-2).

The plant will be state-owned, marking the government's return to direct electricity generation — a sector that has been dominated for two decades by independent power producers.

A Project in a Financially Strained Sector

Aside from rising demand, the announcement comes amid acute financial strain in Ghana's energy sector. The power sector recorded a $2.2 billion deficit in 2024, despite $2.1 billion in public transfers between 2023 and 2024, Minister Forson warned at the National Economic Dialogue in March 2025.

Without structural reforms, the sector's cumulative debt could exceed $9 billion by end-2026, according to IMF projections reported by News Ghana in December 2025. That trajectory is partly driven by commercial losses at the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), which recovers only 62% of the energy it purchases, according to Minister Forson.

That financial fragility has not dampened the government's ambitions. Beyond domestic consumption, Mahama said the additional capacity will allow Ghana to export electricity to neighboring countries, including Burkina Faso, to earn foreign exchange.

Ghana already partially supplies several countries in the subregion through the West African Power Pool regional grid. Based on the president’s figures, the new plant, if delivered on schedule, would represent roughly a 28% increase over current peak capacity.

The urgency of that diversification was underscored just days earlier. On April 23, a fire broke out in a control room at the Akosombo Dam, forcing a complete shutdown of the facility and the loss of approximately 1,000 MW from the national grid. An additional 150 to 200 MW were lost at the Kpong station, according to Energy Ministry spokesman Richmond Rockson.

Energy Minister John Jinapor described the incident as "one of the most serious disruptions ever recorded in Ghana's electricity sector" at a press conference on April 27, as reported by Graphic Online. Although the dam's output was fully restored on May 1, the episode exposed the vulnerability of a national grid still heavily dependent on a single hydroelectric facility.

Abdel-Latif Boureima