The Ministry of Energy and Green Transition says Ghana’s electricity distribution challenges go beyond ageing transformers, revealing widespread infrastructure defects, including rotting poles, faulty cable terminations and a shortage of key distribution equipment contributing to recent power outages.

Head of Communications at the Ministry, Richmond Rockson, disclosed on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show, explaining that the government’s ongoing distribution upgrade programme is designed to tackle several layers of the problem at once.

He said the emergency phase of the programme will not only focus on transformers but also on critical network failures that have accumulated over the years of underinvestment.

According to him, the intervention includes the replacement of nearly 2,000 rotting electricity poles nationwide, fixing faulty cable terminations, and supplying about 30,000 fuses as well as over 300 distribution panels to strengthen weak points in the system.

“You are not looking at anything less than 4 billion to be able to deal with that,” Mr Rockson said, referring to the scale of funding required to address both immediate and medium-term distribution challenges.

He explained that the broader programme has been structured in phases, with the first three months focused on urgent repairs and replacements, followed by medium-term interventions spanning up to a year, and a longer 18-month phase targeting core infrastructure upgrades.

The final phase, he noted, will involve major backbone improvements, including the construction of new primary substations, replacement of damaged underground cables, and the rollout of digital monitoring systems to help detect faults and identify outage-prone areas in real time.

Mr Rockson said the aim is to modernise the distribution network and reduce the frequency of outages affecting homes, businesses and industries across the country.