Ghana Celebrates Independence day in total blackout

Every Independence Day, Ghanaians of a certain age make the same speech. My grandfather’s is the finest, tinged by a pride he’s felt since that day on March 6th, 1957 when the British Gold Coast became the Republic of Ghana and he ran alongside President Kwame Nkrumah’s car in a crowd of tens of thousands. “We have everything,” he says every year. “Gold, bauxite, diamonds.

” The high point of this speech is always the Akosombo Dam. In 1965, it turned part of the Volta River into one of the largest man-made lakes in the world. The dam powered what was then Africa’s biggest aluminum smelter, huge swathes of Ghana, and parts of Togo and Benin.

On this Friday, March 6, Ghana’s 58th Independence Day, the country is well into its worst energy crisis in decades. Water levels at the dam are at critical lows, and there are problems with its thermal plants, leading to 24-hour blackouts.

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