Minister of Energy and Green Transition, John Jinapor, has indicated that the government of Ghana will be engaging in a barter arrangement with neighbouring Nigeria as part of efforts to stabilise power supply in Ghana. He was speaking at the Future of Energy Conference, a 2-day event hosted by the Africa Centre for Energy Policy in Accra. The move by Ghana is geared towards achieving regional power integration while deepening its contribution to energy security in West Africa.

“So far we supply power to Togo, we supply power to Burkina, we supply power to Cote d’Ivoire, and we intend extending to other neighbouring countries. We also supply power to Benin. And so in the spirit of that cooperation we believe that we can work together and we take gas from Nigeria.

So what Ghana does is that we take the gas from Nigeria, we generate power, and re-export. And we are in discussions with Nigeria to see if we can have a barter, where we take their gas, convert it to power, and export the power to Nigeria in the spirit of West African cooperation”, he said

Ghana has been a customer of Nigeria for the supply of natural gas for more than a decade under the West African Gas Pipeline project operated by a joint venture company WAPCo. However with the new barter arrangement between the governments of Ghana and Nigeria, the Minister believes that will deepen cooperation between the two countries as Abuja struggles to meet the energy demands of its population yet has abundant petroleum resources while Accra also has excess power it could export back after processing the gas. The energy mix in Ghana is made up of hydro, thermal and solar generated by state-owned entities and independent power producers. According to Mr. Jinapor, hydro is used as battery for solar sources as the nation alternates between solar during daytime and hydro during peak hours at night but underscored the need for private sector investment in terms of regional value chain development, supported by ACFTA, in the area of local processing of critical minerals, local manufacturing of clean energy technologies, and skills development within the West Africa sub-region.

“Recently I was working on a paper, and when I looked at the statistics, about 80% of the investments in Africa were borne by African governments. And whilst we required some billions, I have to check the data again, we were able to mobilise just about 10% of what is required for Africa to meet that gap. And so African governments alone cannot resolve this challenge. We need a private sector, we need civil society, we need non-governmental organisations and international bodies to be able to achieve this objective,” he added

The future of energy conference is ACEP’s annual flagship event that creates platform for dialogue between major stakeholders in the energy space and industry experts drawn from governmental institutions, multilateral agencies, private sector, civil society, academia and development partners.

This year’s theme, “Financing Africa’s Energy Future: Unlocking Investments for Energy Access and Economic Transformation,” to the Ghana’s Energy and Green Transition Minister presents both a challenge and a call to action therefore it’s an imperative to “mobilise competitive and sustainable financing mechanisms, including bond markets, carbon trading, and green funding” as African governments cannot shoulder the cost of energy investments alone, he noted.