Nigeria will increase its supply of electricity to Ghana through the West African Power Pool, which comes on-stream this month. The Power Pool Agreement, between Ghana, Nigeria and the Ivory Coast, combines these countrys' electricity generation into a pool, giving them all a safeguard to fall back on in the event of an energy shortfall in their country.
This is good news for Ghana, a country with an energy requirement estimated at 2000MW, and a total generation output of 1200MW. 69% of the energy is generated from hydroelectric sources (912MW from the Akosombo dam and 160MW from the Kpong dam) and 30.4% is generated from fossil fuels.
President Kufuor made the announcement during his presentation of the country's implementation report on the African Peer Review Mechanism recommendations at the Sixth Summit of the APRM Heads of State and Government Forum. The summit is being held in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, on the sidelines of the Eighth Africa Union's ordinary session and the president's report received overwhelming commendation from the 25 states signed up to the APRM.
In addition to this, the president cited plans for the construction of the 400MW capacity Bui dam as confirmation that Ghana is taking independent measures to boost its generation of electricity and said that Ghana was also exploring solar power and bio-diesel as alternative sources of power.
