Chibeze Ezekiel

So what this means is that it's going to have a devastating impact on their source of livelihood and their life as a whole.

So this shows that the adverse impact of coal far outweighs the economic benefit.

Ghana and Africa need energy, but we don't want coal to be that energy.

We managed to shut down the coal plant, and we didn't want coal to be part of the country's energy system.

But it did take a bit of fighting.

When we learned of the plan to build a coal plant, we began engaging the local communities.

We took an approach known as a submarine approach.

So basically what that means is that we never went on social media, we didn't go publicly, we didn't engage the media on our reservations.

We spent days with the people in the community, talking to the chiefs, the elders, the women groups, the youth networks, to inquire from them whether they have all the necessary knowledge about the coal plant, because it is their right to have adequate information.

And that is what we did.

We brought them information about the negative impact of coal in other countries.

We also had to assure them that the jobs being promised them does not guarantee long-term benefits.

we also sought for their input in our advocacy campaign.

In our engagements with the local communities, we realized that most of them were not even aware of the consequences of the coal plant.

They have actually been assured by the promoters that the plant will be clean and safe for residents.

Others also had their own reservations, but didn't know who to channel them to.

we teamed up with other NGOs working in the environmental sector.

It was only when the local community got well-informed about the plant to challenge the promoters' claim that that gave us the time to bring out the submarine approach.

That was when we began social media campaigns, organized press conferences, and did a lot of media engagement to also share our views against the coal plant.

We also accompanied our campaign against coal plants with the need for renewable energy.