Ghana will spend $200mn over two years preparing for its first nuclear power plant, with the aim of signing an engineering, procurement, construction and financing (EPC) contract for a fully state-owned plant by December 2028, Finance Minister Cassiel Ato Forson said on November 12.
Forson announced the 24-month programme, which will run from January 2027 to December 2028, while presenting the 2027 budget statement to parliament. He said completing the programme would not mean that nuclear electricity generation would begin in 2028.
The nuclear allocation falls under a $2.2bn energy pillar of a $10bn investment programme for 2027–2030 that the government plans to finance mainly by cutting its primary surplus target to 0.5% of GDP from 1.5%, IntelliNews reported.
The funding will cover site suitability, technology selection, environmental assessment, financing, licensing, safeguards, emergency planning and safety requirements, the Ghana News Agency reported. Nuclear Power Ghana has identified Nsuban in the Western Region as its preferred site, with Obotan in the Central Region as the alternative.
Forson said international partners would provide technology, financing, engineering and specialist services, but the government would retain ownership and the plant would not be run as an independent power producer (IPP). The government also plans to train more than 2,000 Ghanaian scientists. The minister did not give a capacity for the plant.
The budget follows Foreign Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa’s announcement on October 31 that Russia had agreed to work with Ghana on a 2,000-megawatt (MW) nuclear plant, after talks between President John Dramani Mahama and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. The talks build on a memorandum of understanding between the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission and Rosatom, but no financing package, reactor design, construction timetable or final contract for that project has been announced, IntelliNews reported.
Ghana previously selected China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) for a proposed 1,200MW reactor and US-based Regnum Technology Group, using NuScale Power (NYSE:SMR) technology, for a separate 924MW small modular reactor plant. Neither has secured a final construction contract. Ghana’s nuclear programme targets about 1,000MW by 2034, according to the World Nuclear Association, and the government has not said whether the Russian project would supplement or replace the earlier ones.
Funding has held back earlier preparations. Stephen Yamoah, executive director of Nuclear Power Ghana, warned in March that a lack of money for detailed site characterisation and an environmental impact assessment meant the project could not progress beyond Phase Two of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s three-stage Milestones Approach, IntelliNews reported. In September, Environment, Science and Technology Minister Zanetor Agyeman-Rawlings said meteorological monitoring systems had been installed at the preferred and alternative sites and that site characterisation was progressing.
The budget also provides for a fully state-owned 600MW solar plant with 2,000MWh of battery storage; a fully state-funded 1,450MW thermal plant at Kafodzidzi-Abrobeano in the Central Region, with 600MW due by December 2028 and the rest by December 2030; the phasing out of emergency power plants by 2030; and $500mn over 2027–2030 to modernise the transmission network and deploy 2mn prepaid meters.
Forson put the energy sector’s annual shortfall at about $1.4bn in 2025 and said the measures aimed to cut generation costs from about 16 US cents per kilowatt-hour to 8 cents or less.
See IntelliNews: Rosatom discusses nuclear power projects with Uganda, Ghana, Ethiopia and Egypt
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