The co-founder and CEO of Zeepay, Andrew Takyi-Appiah, is optimistic that Ghanaians can solve the problem of intermittent power outage, popularly known as Dumsor without the help of politicians.
He argues that several communities have individual residents with under-utilized power generators in their homes, and the redundant capacities can be leveraged to solve Dumsor at the community level.
“If a community has, say, a thousand power generators owned by its residents, those generator sets can be connected to a community level grid so that, in the event of blackout, all of the extra capacity could feed the mini grid to benefit the lower-class homes, which do not have generators,” he said.
Andrew Takyi-Appiah said such a system could also be tailored for a community-based strategy so that the community can profit from the revenue to undertake community-based development projects.
Speaking during the Mobile Technology for Development (MT4D) session at the just-ended 3i Africa Summit, Andrew Takyi-Appiah exhorted Ghanaians to rise above their fears and realize their full potentials in tackling challenges at the community level.
“I think that what is happening to us is that we are scared to evolve as a people…Let’s just evolve because we have the infrastructure and the thought process, so maybe that might solve that problem,” he stated.
According to him, from a policy standpoint, Rwanda had a mini-grid strategy, which fed into the national grid to ensure power is available 24/7, and that is something Ghana can learn from, as a strategy to deal with Dumsor.
Andrew Takyi-Appiah stressed that rather than concentrating on politicians, it is critical that chiefs, members of communities, and associations work together to deal with Dumsor at their level.
Watch video below:
