‘Dumsor dumsor’ — a phrase in Ghana’s Akan language that translates to ‘power cut’ — has become shorthand for describing Ghana’s electricity woes, in the same way people in South Africa refer to ‘loadshedding.’ The local electricity regulator blames the power cuts on overloaded transformers. But experts say it is partly due to the country’s inability to pay private electricity suppliers, who provide the bulk of Ghana’s electricity. Ghana’s state power company, the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), owes over $1.7 billion to these suppliers. The sum of unpaid bills has become so vast that power suppliers have often refused to continue supplying electricity. This includes the Ghanaian parliament, which in March was plunged into darkness over a debt of $1.8 million, according to the ECG.
SOURCE: DW
