Chibeze Ezekiel

About 600 million people in Africa still don't have reliable access to electricity, and energy shortages are still a part of daily life.

Africa needs energy, a lot of energy.

But the question is, what kind of energy?

I want to tell you a story.

My name is Chibizi Ezekiel, and I work with the Strategic Youth Network for Development.

In 2013,

the government of my country, Ghana, began consultations to construct a coal plant, a 700-megawatt coal plant meant to be sited at Okunfi District, a coastal fishing community in the central region of Ghana.

It would have required a US$1.5 billion loan from the China African Development Bank.

And because Ghana has no coal reserves, the project made provision to import 2 million tons of coal annually from South Africa.

So I ask again, Ghana and Africa need energy, but what kind of energy?

In Africa, job creation and economic opportunities are their priority.

And those were the same arguments that were made by those who were in support of the project.

They claimed

that the project or the coal plant would have created jobs for the local youth and also expanded the economy of the country.

But we know that coal is the most polluting form of power generation.

We are also aware that from a purely economic point of view, coal is cheap.

But that is only true when we ignore the non-economic impact of coal.

Talk about wastewater,

fly ash, emissions of sulfur and mercury, which would have posed serious health and environmental risk to the Okunfi population.

In our part of the world, we have people who depend on water bodies for bathing, for cooking, for washing and even for drinking.