BARRING

In 1915, a perceptive engineer, Albert Kitson, realized that the Kwahu Plateau was rich in bauxite deposits. If a dam could be built on the Volta River, it would generate enough electricity to run a major smelter, and Tema could be turned into a deep-water port for aluminum exports. He submitted his report to the British governor, Guggisberg, who found the project too costly.

Forty years later, Nkrumah revived the idea. Obsessed with the idea of industrializing the country, he felt it was necessary to carry out the project at all costs. At the time, however, the country's only exports were gold, manganese, bauxite and diamonds. Revenues were too low to go ahead with the project.

As a result, he had to accept the restrictive terms of the American firm Valco. The terms of the proposed contract were that two-thirds of the electricity produced would be retroceded, and that this advantageous contract would be established over a long period. The project was so costly that plans to extract bauxite from the Kwahu Plateau had to be postponed. Raw materials had to be imported. Work began in 1961, and the cost continued to rise. Young Ghanaians called up to work on the site were trained abroad. 84,000 expropriated people had to be resettled, most of them in the Kete-Krachi region, but also in Tema, where a city and a new port were to be built.

At the same time, the price of cocoa plummeted several times. A month after inaugurating the dam in 1966, the army ousted Nkrumah from power. For the next 17 years, the economy grew unevenly, and the terms of the contract signed with Valco provided little revenue for the Ghanaian state. The government was obliged to sell electricity to generate foreign currency.

The dam is 124 m high and 368 m deep. With a few exceptions, such as the droughts of 1983-1984, it supplies enough electricity to meet the needs of Ghana's industries and households, and covers much of Togo and Benin. Because of the likelihood of earthquakes, the dam is not built of solidified concrete, but, like nuclear power plants, with a lining of large stones. Lake Volta is one of the world's largest man-made lakes. It now floods 850,000 hectares of land, equivalent to 7% of Ghana's surface area.