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On August 17, 2022, the host of Onua Maakye TV show, Blessed Godsbrain Smart, popularly known as Captain Smart, stated that Ghana distributed free electricity to Togo.
Captain Smart said this when the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) disconnected residents of Yilo and Manya Krobo municipalities from the national grid for weeks.
According to him, instead of cutting the area from the grid because of the people’s refusal to accept the installation of prepaid meters, ECG could have supplied the residents without any difficulty because the company distributed electricity to Togo for free.
Fact-check Ghana has verified Captain Smart’s claim and presents the findings below.
Claim: “…The loan that World Bank was supposed to give to Togo was given to Ghana on negotiations that Ghana export free electricity to Togo. I want to show you today that, the electricity we generate here in Ghana and export to Togo is free of charge.”
Verdict: Completely false
Explanation: Data acquired from the Electricity Company of Ghana through a right to information request shows that Ghana does not export electricity to Togo for free.
The Company said it has generated over $1 million from the export of electricity to Ghana’s eastern neighbour, Togo, for the year 2021.
Below is a tabular representation of the amount of energy exported in Watt and the total revenue generated for the past five years.
| YEAR | UNIT (KWH) | TOTAL REVENUE (USD) |
| 2016 | 4,073,991.90 | 815,126.25 |
| 2017 | 4,629,479.33 | 931,845.74 |
| 2018 | 4,875,264.50 | 981,089.20 |
| 2019 | 5,070,490.10 | 1,020,098.04 |
| 2020 | 5,274,221.40 | 1,064,844.28 |
| 2021 | 5,319,690.00 | 1,069,938.00 |
| Total | 29,243,137.23 | 5,882,941.51 |
From the data presented above, Captain Smart’s claim that Ghana exports free electricity to Togo is Completely false.
The writer of this report, Diana Amoako Boakyewaa, is a Fellow of the Next Generation Investigative Journalism Fellowship at the Media Foundation for West Africa.
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Kindly help me with this.
Is ECG the energy sector organization that trades Ghana’s electricity across borders?
Thank you.