Ghana’s Bui Hydropower Dam and Linkage Creation Challenges

Abstract

This study examines the issues of linkage development pertaining to the Bui Hydropower Dam.¹ Completed in 2013, the 400-megawatt hydropower facility was touted by the government to catalyse Ghana’s socio-economic transformation. However, while the Chinese contractor delivered the physical edifice to the Ghanaian government, the dam’s material benefits have yet to materialize. The inability to instigate economic linkages from the project has sparked debate in research and policy circles in Ghana. While some scholars reference local factors, others cite external elements, including the demands of Chinese actors and financiers as the cause of the limited economic linkages the dam created in the Ghanaian economy. This paper explores these counterpropositions. Drawing from exploratory mixed-method research, the paper asserts that although linkage creation is mediated by internal and external factors, the former is more salient when it comes to engagement with China.

Keywords:

• Africa
• linkages
• Bui Dam
• Ghana
• China

Notes

1 Hereafter called Bui Dam.

2 Bui, where the Bui Dam is located is about 400 miles northwest from Accra.

3 The italics are mine.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kwame Adovor Tsikudo

Kwame Adovor Tsikudo is a human-environment geographer with the Department of Geography and Geographic Information Science and an affiliate faculty at the Centre for African Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His works on political economy, the environment, and south-south cooperation have been published as book chapters and articles in journals, including Science of the Total Environment. He also has forthcoming articles in the Canadian Journal of African Studies, Journal of Contemporary African Studies, and African Geographical Review.