Nigeria is Africa’s largest economy with a GDP of about $397.3 billion. Yet, about 55 per cent of her citizens are without access to electricity. For the citizens with access, the reliability of the electricity supply is low. Only a small fraction (less than a quarter) of the installed capacity (about 13,000MW) gets to the consumers.
Ghana’s GDP (US$65.6 billion) is six times less, but it has a better access rate (about 83 per cent) than Nigeria. In Accra, the country’s capital, more than 95 per cent of the population has access to electricity. Although, the average customer experienced over 2,000 hours without power supply in 2015.
And let’s not forget about Nigeria’s population (about 190 million). It is nearly seven times that of Ghana (23.83 million). Referring to the previous paragraph, it means that about 105 million Nigerians are without access to electricity. Whereas, about 4 million Ghanaians are without access to electricity. In fact, Ghana was able to reverse its shortage of generation capacity in about 4 years (between 2014 and 2019)! Today, the country is on the brink of having so much electricity that it poses a financial strain on their economy.
Given the disparity in the population and energy access, while some people could consider Ghana’s predicament as an Energy Crisis, others could place Nigeria’s situation on a moderately higher pedestal, Energy Poverty.