12 hours of light, 24 hours of dark

September 25, 2016 8:57 PM

Ghana has one of the highest rates of access to electricity in Africa - and yet experienced 159 days of rolling blackouts last year. For Ghanaians, this causes all sorts of problems. Al-Jazeera English explores the dumsors: the electricity outages leaving Ghana in the dark.

Dumsor, by Ghanaian rapper Sarkodie

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Power Outage? Can't see in the dark? Your room is darker than sin? Dumsor is here to brighten your corner and make life easy in your darkest moments.

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Jeremiah Quarshie: "When I don't feel the urge to paint, I start wishing for the lights to go out so I can have an excuse to go out."

posted by ChuraChura (7 comments total)

Ironically, a country that gets a large proportion of its power from hydroelectric power has trouble generating said power due to climate change. Yay.
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:04 AM on September 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

And by "ironically," I mean "people who have contributed less to the problem are suffering more."
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:08 AM on September 26, 2016

There have been significant oil & gas discoveries offshore Ghana. The oil is being produced by FPSO but I think the gas is stranded until a pipeline is built to take it to shore. It would be great if they could get some gas fired power plants going. There is a huge amount of gas in Nigeria, next door, and a pipeline too, but there are too many problems about capital investment.
posted by Bee'sWing at 9:47 AM on September 26, 2016

I think the gas is stranded

Sorry I just did a double-take at "an ancient natural resource humans aren't immediately able to exploit" being described as "stranded".
posted by Jimbob at 9:56 AM on September 26, 2016

As far as I know Ghana is quite worried about Dutch disease with regard to it's oil reserves, Nigeria being the horrible example next door.

They're better off with their supply than Nigeria, which I think has lowest consumption per capita despite being world's 7th? (13th. That's changed.) largest oil producer? It's funny what you can get used to, living and planning without electricity. Use of inverters, giving you maybe three days of the lights being on at night but not enough juice to switch on the fridge (shop and cook every day, no rest for the housewife.) Use of generators and a whole accompanying industry of graft and petrol profiteering and sabotage, micro and macro. Of course these solutions are not within reach of most households, and the uncertain supply is devastating for home grown industries with knock-on effects for the economy.
posted by glasseyes at 11:26 AM on September 26, 2016

And by "ironically," I mean "people who have contributed less to the problem are suffering more."

Yes, that is unfortunately the point. The absence of really scalable power storage means those who don't contribute to the global problem, suffer significant local outages.
posted by effugas at 12:21 PM on September 26, 2016

"Stranded " gas is a common concept in oil & gas. For example, lots of gas fields have been found on the North Slope of Alaska but there is no way to get them to market so the companies that found them are in limbo. Enormous gas fields have been found offshore Mozambique (one of the least developed countries in Africa) but unless you invest 5 to 10 billion dollars, there is no way to get the gas to places like India or Japan where the gas is desperately needed. People want electricity, gas is better than coal for making it. Japan wanted to get away from their less than perfectly safe nuclear generating but they have not be able to.
posted by Bee'sWing at 12:37 PM on September 26, 2016