E30: When the Lights Come On, What Will Ghana Produce?

Just recently, while studying for an actuarial professional exam in Ghana, I experienced one of the frustrating realities of our energy problem firsthand.

The lights kept going out. Without electricity, the Wi-Fi stopped working. Without the Wi-Fi, my online study materials wouldn't load. And with an already unstable network, studying became much harder than it needed to be.

This is Episode 30 of What This Finance News Means for Ghanaians 🇬🇭, where I break down finance news and then share my thoughts in a simple and practical way.

Speaking at the 2026 Future of Energy Conference in Accra on Wednesday, Dr. Forson said "Africa cannot rely on public budgets alone to finance the energy infrastructure it needs. The continent needs alternative sources of financing, including private investment and public-private partnerships, to close its huge energy funding gap."

And the gap is significant. Nearly 600 million Africans lack access to electricity, while Africa attracts only about 2% of global clean-energy investment. Without reliable energy, it becomes difficult to build factories, expand businesses and create the jobs needed for industrialisation.

But there is another part of Dr. Forson's speech that really stood out to me.

Africa has the resources, yet we often export them and import the finished products.

As he put it: we export cocoa and import chocolate. We export bauxite and import aluminium products. And now, we risk exporting critical minerals only to import batteries.

That is the cycle Africa needs to break. Because energy is not simply about keeping our homes lit. It is about what Ghana can produce.

If electricity is unreliable or too expensive, a factory cannot operate efficiently. A small business cannot plan properly. A student may struggle to study. And a country with valuable natural resources may continue exporting them in their raw form instead of creating jobs and wealth by processing them locally.

This is why financing matters. Governments cannot fund all the energy infrastructure Africa needs from their budgets alone. Dr. Forson called for tools such as guarantees, blended finance, local-currency funding, deeper capital markets and credible public-private partnerships.

But attracting money is only part of the solution. We also need to make sure that investment creates lasting value in Africa—processing our minerals, developing local suppliers, building technical skills and manufacturing products closer to where the resources are found.

For me, that is the bigger lesson from this week's news: Ghana doesn't just need more power. We need to use that power to produce more.

Because the goal should not be to simply have electricity available. The goal should be to turn resources into production, production into jobs, and jobs into prosperity.

And perhaps one day, when a student sits down to study in Ghana, “the lights went off” will no longer be part of the story.

What do you think Ghana needs to do to move from exporting raw materials to producing more finished products?