Ei Kojo,
If you are reading this under a bulb that is actually on, then praise be to ECG and all its ancestral cables. Because as for me, I am writing under moonlight and mosquito attack, with the last two bars of power on my powerbank and the last bar of will on my soul.
It happened again this morning. ECG announced “planned maintenance” across Tema, Accra East and the Ashanti Region — and added, almost as an afterthought, that engineers were still trying to fix a broken high-tension pole at Suame Magazine that took out half the industrial hub on Monday. Suame Magazine, Kojo. The mechanic capital of West Africa. The place where if your car breaks down anywhere between Lagos and Abidjan, you push it. They are now in darkness. The mechanics are using torchlights to find each other’s spanners. There is a metaphor in there somewhere, but my brain has also gone off.
Let me back up. You know the trouble started in April. There was a fire at the GRIDCo Akosombo substation, and ever since then we have been living what the technical people call a “reduced supply situation” and what we ordinary citizens call “why is my fridge crying again.” 800-megawatt deficit. Three rotating groups — A, B and C. Six hours at a time. Ghana has now been organised into alphabetical suffering, charley. You are no longer a citizen. You are a group. People greet each other at the junction with, “Eii, my brother, what group are you?” like we are in a secondary school house competition. Group A complains. Group B complains. Group C insists their light went off longer than everybody’s, and demands a recount.
But here is where ECG showed us its genius. When the country began shouting “Dumsor!”, the External Communications Manager came on TV and asked us — with a straight face — what we understood by the word dumsor. She said when somebody asks her if there is dumsor, she asks them back, “What do you think dumsor means?”
Kojo. Sister. Madam. With all due respect. Dum means “off.” Sɔ means “on.” Dum-sɔ means “off-on.” It is not a riddle. It is not a philosophical position. It is not a vibe. It is a verb. When my light goes off and comes back and goes off again before I can even shout “Praise the Lord,” that is dumsor. There is no advanced Twi seminar required.
But this is Sikaman. In this country, we do not solve problems. We rename them. Dumsor is now “load management.” Load management is now “planned maintenance.” Planned maintenance is now “system upgrade.” By next month they shall call it “resilience enhancement protocol,” and ECG shall hire a consultant from abrokyire to give a PowerPoint presentation on it. The lights shall still be off. But the vocabulary shall be magnificent.
Last Saturday I went to that small spot behind Alhaji’s container — you know the one, the TV is hanging from a nail like it is being crucified for our sins. The match was on. The crowd was thick. Two bottles of Star Beer were sweating quietly on the bench. And then, in the 73rd minute, with the ball moving forward and the goalkeeper out of position — dum. Total black. The TV gave one last electric sigh and surrendered. Forty grown men stood in darkness shouting at a screen that was no longer there. One man, Kojo, one man refused to accept it. He kept commentating from memory. “He’s running, he’s running, he’s about to shoot — oh my GOD, what a save!” We all cheered. We did not know what we were cheering. It did not matter. ECG had given us the gift of imagination.
That is the Ghanaian condition in 2026, my brother. We are commentating on matches we cannot see.
And yet — yɛ wɔ ho. We are here. The country has adapted. The plantain woman now runs a generator bigger than her stand; she sells one plantain at 5 cedis and the diesel costs her 6, but she is a woman of principle. The phone-credit boy at the junction charges your phone for 3 cedis and has converted his stall into what we may legally describe as Ghana’s most informal data centre. The barber has learned to cut hair by phone-torch and still gives you a clean fade — though every Ghanaian man my age has at least one small line on the side of his head that we do not discuss in public.
And let us be honest about one thing, Kojo. There is one demographic in this country that has never complained about dumsor. Not once. You know who I am talking about. The young couples. The newly-engaged. The ones quietly courting in chamber-and-hall apartments. For them, every blackout is a blessing. The Holy Spirit moves where the electricity does not. Ghana’s birth rate, my friend, has a quiet partnership with ECG that nobody is willing to acknowledge in the budget statement.
But the children — ah, the children — they have begun to think candles are a permanent feature of home décor. There is a generation of Ghanaian kids who, when they see a chandelier in a hotel, ask their mother, “Mummy, why are there so many candles on the ceiling?” They do not know. They have never known. To them, “the light has come” is a celebration on the same emotional level as “it has stopped raining” or “jollof is ready.”
And the politicians? Don’t even start me. Every party promises to end dumsor. Every party. They have all promised. They have promised in English, in Twi, in Ewe, in pidgin, on radio, on TV, on TikTok, in dreams. By now ECG has been ended so many times that if promises were power, Ghana would be exporting electricity to Burkina Faso.
So here we are, Kojo. Hon. John Jinapor in Parliament is shouting that the outages are not transformer faults but a generation shortfall — a money problem, not a wire problem. ECG is shouting back that everything is fine, do not call it dumsor, call it something else. Akosombo is recovering. Suame Magazine is dark. My laptop is on 6%. My neighbour’s generator sounds like a goat being cross-examined.
If you ever write a book on Ghanaian endurance, my brother, dumsor should be Chapter One. Not because it is our greatest problem — galamsey is bigger, the cedi is louder — but because it has taught us a particular kind of patience. We do not switch the lights off in this country. The system does it for us. And still, still, we go to work in the morning with torchlights in our laptop bags like we are off on a small camping expedition. We take selfies in the dark and call it “natural filter.” We learn to iron our shirts using body heat and a small prayer.
We move. We laugh. We charge.
If your light is on as you read this, Kojo, use it well. Iron all your shirts. Charge every device including the ones you don’t remember owning. Fry all your eggs at once. Boil water you don’t need yet. Dumsor dey come like thief wey no knock, and when she arrives, she does not consult Group A, Group B, or Group C. She is her own group.
I must end now. My powerbank is begging. The mosquito has located my left ear and has begun what sounds like an opening prayer. Greet your wife. Greet your generator. If you don’t hear from me by Friday, send a search party — and please, please, let them bring a torchlight that works.
Yours in eternal blackout, Kwabena Kokote Frequent Customer of ECG · Chief Priest of the Electric Altar · Member, Group B (Allegedly)
P.S. — Madam External Communications Manager, dum means off, sɔ means on. I have included a glossary so we don’t have to debate the definition again. The next time we meet, please come with light, not vocabulary.