Dumsor forever or for worse

"Tomorrow, I will tell auntie to buy me aeroplane so I will fly and go to Norway. When I fly in the air, there will be no light off", says my three-year-old nephew.

At age three, my little nephew knows what light off is and doesn't like it. He believes there will be a better experience [in the aeroplane] in the air. This brings to mind the implications of power outages on the life experiences of little children.

When I was three years old, I knew what light off was because it was something that was commonly happening in Ghana. It's sad that as I have grown into adulthood, Ghana has not been able to solve the persisting problem of power outages and it has even become worse, earning it a new name, dumsor (a Twi phrase that means off and on).

It's a serious issue for us as a country if we are unable to solve some of our biggest problems and end up handing them down to the next generation. We owe the next generation of Ghanaians as well as generations of Ghanaians unborn a duty to solve our current problems and not leave behind for them a "legacy of problems".

In an era of science and technology, it is very disappointing if a problem like dumsor persists in Ghana. From the way things have been over the past decade, I do not have doubts that in the next two to three decades, dumsor would still be a phenomenon in Ghana. This is because over the past decade, anytime the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) announces that there would be power outages, the reason the company gives is that there is going to be maintenance works. For most of the time too, the power outages come without prior notice and this disrupts people's plans, events and other activities that require the use of electricity.

A few years ago when Ghana's power crisis was at its peak and the term "dumsor" emerged, the cause of this problem was a low water level in the Akosombo hydroelectric dam, Ghana's main source of electricity.

For how long will we continue experiencing power outages that are necessitated by maintenance works? I am not an expert of electricity transmission technology but I do wonder a lot what kind of technology we are using in Ghana that always requires maintenance that necessitates the cutting of power. I do not hear of frequent power cuts in advanced countries like Norway, the UK, US and Canada. What technology do these countries use?

Back to my little nephew's idea of flying away from dumsor. It only points to the reality that little children feel the effects of dumsor. I can imagine how the experience is like for little children; they can't watch TV when there is dumsor. It also gets hot indoors when there is dumsor because there would be no electricity to power the electric fan or air condition units.

The idea of flying away from dumsor also points to the reality that some Ghanaians who can't cope with some of our country's problems will "fly away" to "better" countries where there are better services, opportunities and systems. We need to invest in modern and innovative technology as a way of solving Ghana's most crucial problems. The earlier we make things better, the better for the next and future generations of Ghanaians.