Dr. Humphrey Ayim-Darke, President of the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI), has urged African governments to embrace nuclear technology and capitalize on its potential for industrialization and prosperity.

He stated that, in addition to creating and supplying cheaper power, which facilitated industrialization, nuclear technology benefited vital areas of the economy such as agriculture, health, transportation, water, and sanitation.

“We expect leadership to have a clear and deliberate plan to move the nuclear agenda,” Dr Ayim-Darke said during a breakout session at the on-going second U.S.-Africa Nuclear Energy Summit (USANES) in Nairobi Kenya.

The event was hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), in collaboration with the Kenyan Nuclear Power and Energy Agency (NuPEA) and the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum of Kenya (MoEP).

Dr. Ayim-Darke indicated that the available trend of the Energy Ministry’s demand for electricity projects in the last five years suggested that demand would exceed production if deliberate steps were not taken to increase generation.

“With the global goal to adhere to sustainable power generation and less carbon footprints, small modular reactors’ technology for instance will be ideal to address challenges. Our leaders need to act fast, otherwise we might go into crisis.

“We aspire to industrialise but the cost of power currently is too high. When power is expensive, the cost of production shoots up and the price of products becomes expensive and that impacts negatively on the purchasing power of customers,” he said. 

Dr Ayim-Darke urged the presidency to fast-track the technical processes leading to the announcement of vendors to pave the way for construction work on the nuclear plant, given the challenge ahead.

He noted that African countries, particularly Ghana, were ripe to establish their nuclear power plant to help trigger socio-economic development.

“If I tell you how much the cost of power to produce a product, and now that I have AfCFTA, continental free trade coming in, if we are not careful, our country will become a dumping ground, and then you become a retail unit, and then you cannot create jobs… I pray that this will drive leadership with the alacrity to push the nuclear agenda,” he noted. 

Ghana has approved the inclusion of nuclear technology into its power generation mix.

The move is in consonance with the global collective commitment to the sustainable availability of power, and the peaceful exploitation of nuclear energy to enhance rapid industrialisation and to propel economic growth.

Already, Ghana has settled on a preferred site and backup for its first nuclear power plant.

The plant will be the baseload power for industrialisation, address concerns of limited hydro sources, postulated decline of gas, cause tariff reduction for industries, desalination, and employment creation.

Government is expected to formally announce a company to build its first nuclear power plant from contenders, including France’s EDF, U.S.-based NuScale Power and Regnum Technology Group, and China National Nuclear Corporation.

The rest of the vendors are South Korea’s Kepco and its subsidiary, Korea Hydro Nuclear Power Corporation, as well as Russia’s ROSATOM.