Social, Economic and Environmental Impacts of the Recent Electricity Crisis in Ghana: A Study of Winneba

Ghana like many countries in Africa, struggles with intermittent power supply, which affects the country’s development. The power fluctuation worsened within the last three and half years. To ensure continuous power supply, some households, institutions, industries and businesses have resorted to self-generated power supply, which comes with extra cost as well as environmental and health hazards. The paper provides a history of Ghana’s energy crisis and analyzes the socioeconomic and environmental impact of the crises on the various sectors of the economy. It uses evidence from the literature as well as a case study from Winneba to support its argument. The paper concludes that the power crisis has social and economic consequences in terms of cost and loss of productivity as well as environmental implications, threatening the success of the green energy debate.