Insights

On September 15 2023, the Volta River Authority (VRA), the organization in charge of manning Ghana’s power generation, began a controlled spillage of the Akosombo hydroelectric dam that would displace 31,000 people (Arku, 2023) in the space of six weeks. The spillage was an organizational failsafe protocol that had been designed to prevent breaching the Akosombo dam’s structural integrity. Facing record rainfall, the organization’s emergency preparedness plan to spill 6,000 metric tonnes of water in order to retain over 150 billion metric tonnes was implemented (StarrFM, 2023). Residents of the lower Volta area had three days between a cautionary press release and the start of the spillage (Volta River Authority, 2023).

The spillage prevented the significant loss of electricity for the country and the complete destruction of majority of the Volta region and Accra, (Vaultz News, 2023) but significant consequences for the dam’s environs. In addition to families losing their homes, there has been extensive damage to infrastructure, contamination in submerged communities, school closures, power cuts, increases in medical cases and loss of livelihoods (Citi FM, 2023; United Nations, 2023; B&FT Online, 2023). There is currently a parliamentary probe into how the Akosombo dam spillage was handled (Asante & Ankrah, 2023). To date, VRA is working with the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) as well as other key players in the public, private sector and third sector to mitigate the spillage’s impacts and pave the road to recovery and normalcy (Calony, 2023).