Ghana’s electricity distribution system is hemorrhaging billions of cedis through widespread power theft, with the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) losing 32 percent of all purchased electricity in 2024, marking the highest loss rate in over two decades. Interviews conducted by The High Street Journal across Accra, Kasoa, Kumasi, and Dodowa reveal that illegal connections have evolved from desperate survival tactics into an entrenched underground economy threatening the nation’s energy sector and broader economic stability.
Between 2018 and 2023, ECG accumulated losses totaling 23.4 billion cedis, approximately 1.5 billion dollars, with a significant portion attributed to power theft and unpaid bills. The Ashanti Regional office alone loses over 14 percent of annual revenue to illegal electricity connections, while national figures show the company lost more than five thousand gigawatt hours of energy in 2024, representing roughly 32 cedis wasted for every hundred cedis spent on power purchases.
Samuel Mensah, interviewed for the investigation, explained that rising tariffs coupled with unstable household incomes have pushed families into corners where maintaining electricity access becomes a monthly struggle. Electricity tariffs increased by 14.75 percent effective May 2025, driven by exchange rate fluctuations, inflation, natural gas costs, and efforts to recover 976 million cedis in outstanding revenue from previous quarters in 2024. Many households now treat illegal connections as necessary survival measures rather than criminal acts, according to community observations.
Small businesses operating cold stores, welding shops, and machinery dependent enterprises face similar pressures. Business owners report that electricity bills increasingly overshadow profit margins, creating situations where some view illegal connections as the only viable option to prevent complete operational collapse. The economic calculus has shifted dramatically as production costs rise faster than consumer purchasing power across multiple sectors.
Systemic delays within ECG itself exacerbate the crisis. Multiple consumers reported waiting months to secure new meters or replace faulty equipment, leaving them without legal means to access power during extended periods. Faced with business continuity needs and household necessities, some connect illegally and hope for eventual regularization when ECG field teams arrive. Others rely on unqualified electricians specializing in bypass techniques, creating dangerous conditions through unsafe wiring and overloaded transformers that endanger entire neighborhoods.
Queen Sennedy Lamptey, another interview subject, stated that electricity theft extends far beyond low income communities. High end residences, hotels, large church buildings, and selected institutions have developed methods to manipulate usage despite possessing financial resources to pay. Rather than addressing consumption inefficiencies or restructuring operational patterns, some well funded entities choose shortcuts that deprive the country of revenue while increasing burdens on law abiding consumers.
Lamptey drew attention to allegations involving certain ECG officials perpetuating the problem. Field workers detecting illegal connections sometimes demand bribes and depart without reporting offenses, effectively converting illegal consumers into long term beneficiaries of a system designed to hold them accountable. This internal compromise undermines public trust and makes accurately tracking and reducing losses nearly impossible for the utility company.
Landlord exploitation presents another dimension of the broader crisis. Some property owners connect electricity illegally and charge tenants inflated fees disguised as service charges. Tenants often discover the truth only during disconnection exercises or when transformers repeatedly burn due to excessive loads, creating constant tension, mistrust, and financial exploitation particularly in areas with large compound houses.
ECG’s persistent challenges, ranging from high technical and non technical losses to inflated procurement costs and unsustainable debt accumulation, have far reaching consequences for Ghana’s fiscal health, macroeconomic stability, and industrial competitiveness. The company consistently fails to generate sufficient revenue to cover operational costs, forcing the government to provide direct budgetary support that contradicts International Monetary Fund (IMF) fiscal consolidation objectives.
ECG owes 68 billion cedis, creating immense financial pressure on the government and the energy market. Official data from the Energy Sector Recovery Program (ESRP) estimate that power sector shortfalls between 2019 and 2023 alone totaled approximately 8.25 billion dollars. The mounting debt forces authorities to divert revenue meant for physical infrastructure development, including roads, hospitals, and school buildings, to offset ECG’s avoidable obligations.
Reduced utility company income limits investment capacity for maintenance and infrastructure upgrades, directly affecting power quality distributed across all regions. Losses translate into higher tariffs, elevated production costs, increased inflation, and weakened investor confidence in the energy sector. Every Ghanaian ultimately bears the burden as law abiding consumers subsidize illegal users through higher bills and deteriorating service quality.
ECG introduced a Loss Reduction Project (LRP) in 2023, installing advanced smart prepaid meters equipped with sophisticated features to detect and prevent illegal tampering. The new meters link to Ghana Card identification numbers, mobile phone numbers, and GPS (Ghana Postal Addressing System) coordinates, with expectations to reduce revenue losses below 20 percent by the end of 2025. The system enables real time detection of illegal connections that previously went unnoticed.
One businessman interviewed by The Business & Financial Times discovered the technology’s effectiveness when ECG officers appeared Monday morning with devices showing his weekend illegal connection activity. The incident occurred after system failures prevented him from purchasing prepaid units through the official application, prompting him to hire a neighborhood electrician for temporary reconnection.
WINA Technologies partnered with South Africa’s Conlog and Egypt’s Iskraemeco to assemble smart meters locally, incorporating strong anti tampering and anti theft protections. Project managers addressed concerns about potentially higher bills, explaining that old meters deteriorated over fifteen years often under record actual usage. New meters provide accurate measurements rather than faster consumption tracking, ensuring customers pay precisely for what they consume according to Ghana Standards Authority specifications.
ECG’s Volta Regional Directorate launched the Loss Reduction Project in Ho District during July 2025, prioritizing paid customers within Ho township, those previously on flat rate billing, and replacement of faulty prepaid meters. Subsequent phases will cover the entire Volta Region, aiming to improve billing accuracy, customer satisfaction, revenue collection, and energy conservation.
Security analysts emphasize that the situation has embedded itself into Ghana’s social fabric. People recognize illegal connections as wrong yet justify them through economic hardship, slow service delivery, or beliefs that widespread theft makes individual compliance futile. The normalization of illegal practices creates self perpetuating cycles where each theft incident encourages additional violations.
Some policy experts advocate engaging Assembly Members in performance based revenue collection initiatives, leveraging their grassroots influence and community trust to improve revenue mobilization while fostering responsible electricity consumption. Similar community based revenue collection strategies have succeeded in Nigeria, where Ikeja Electricity Distribution Company introduced community engagement strategies leveraging local leaders to improve bill payments and reduce illegal connections.
Economists warn that continued inaction risks creating irreversible damage to the power sector. The crisis cannot be resolved through policing alone but requires swift meter provision, transparent and predictable tariff structures, stronger oversight of field officers, reforms in landlord tenant electricity arrangements, and targeted education campaigns emphasizing safety and sustainability.
Resolving ECG’s inefficiencies requires a multi faceted reform approach including deployment of smart metering and digital revenue collection mechanisms to curb non technical losses, stricter regulatory frameworks with clearly defined penalties for power theft, and infrastructure modernization to reduce technical losses. Strengthening governance and regulatory oversight remains equally crucial, with procurement processes requiring stricter scrutiny and transparent competitive bidding systems.
Ghana’s power sector cannot thrive when illegal usage becomes more common than legal consumption. The testimonies gathered reflect a nation struggling to balance survival with responsibility while the utility company fights to maintain revenue in a landscape where desperation meets opportunity. If trends continue unchecked, the country faces spending substantially more to fix a crisis that could have been prevented through timely action, tougher internal controls, and clearer national conversations about energy, accountability, and economic fairness.
Source: newsghana.com.gh
