Ghana’s recently appointed new Minister of Power, Hon. Dr Kwabena Donkor, has met last week with representatives of Upwind International AG and NEK Umwelttechnik AG from Switzerland to discuss the far advanced wind farm project at Ayitepa.

Hon. Dr Donkor embraced the progress the wind farm project reached in the past months and encouraged the developers to also add to the renewable energy cluster at the project site a solar park in order to create Africa’s first hybrid sustainable energy plant. He added that the project is in line with government’s plan for additional electricity generation facilities in the country. 

Hon. Dr Donkor also urged the management of the Ministry to ensure that all required support is given to the developers to quickly finalize the permitting process and the signing of the Power Purchase Agreement and to start construction of the wind farm and the solar park. He mentioned that “timing is crucial and our country and population needs immediate additional generation capacity”.

Hon. Minister Dr Donkor was accompanied by Mr. Wisdom-Ahiataku-Togobo, director of Renewable Energy and Power at the Ministry, and by Mr. Tony Abban, Head of Protocol at the Ministry, while the NEK / Upwind group included Michael Wuddah-Martey, country manager of NEK (Ghana) Ltd., and Dr. Christoph Kapp, CEO of NEK / Upwind.

Christoph Kapp described the wind and solar project at Ayitepa as the ideal solution for Ghana because wind and solar power are the only proven technologies which can achieve the dual objectives of speed of deployment, commissioning and scale. 

Upwind develops the projects in favour of Irish wind and solar company Mainstream Renewable Power Ltd., who recently announced that the projects will be financed, constructed and operated by the pan-African renewable energy generation platform, Lekela Power, which it has formed along with Actis, the global pan-emerging market private equity firm.