Approaches for improving performance of a national power sector: a Ghana exploration

Abstract

This research aims to explore approaches for improving the performance of a national power sector, focusing on Ghana. This research topic is particularly important because the power sector must perform well to satisfy a constantly rising demand for any nation, particularly for an African country, like Ghana. A multilevel-concurrent triangulation design within the mixed-method paradigm forms the core of the methodology for this research. Three broad approaches have been explored. The first approach is efficiency modelling and evaluation based on Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The second applies international benchmarking (IB) to compare the performance of the power sector across a set of countries, including Ghana. Delphi approach is the third, which generates collective perspectives from experts in this sector in Ghana. The three approaches are integrated based on their findings and analysis to provide further insights for performance improvement of the sector. The DEA approach identifies the relatively best and least performed decision-making units (DMUs) in the sector over the years to facilitate internal learning. The IB approach identifies the best performing country or countries based on key performance indicators (KPIs) and reveals the best practices implemented in these best performing countries. The independence of the power sector institutions, long-term planning, and effective management have been reasons for the sector’s success among the benchmarking countries. The experts in Ghana confirmed that technical weaknesses have resulted in frequent interruptions in the power sector in Ghana, leading to high transmission and distribution (T&D) losses. The study also confirmed that the lack of investment and inefficient management of resources, and limited resources were the main problems in Ghana over the years. The integration of the findings of the three approaches provided significant insights for improving efficiency in the T&D subsectors, improving the regulatory and institutional framework, and improving performance of the general KPIs in the power sector. The study contributes to the performance improvement of power sectors in developing nations as well as the performance management literature. The study concludes that different performance approaches can be implemented to improve the efficiency and effective management of the power sector. The study identifies relative efficiencies for iii internal learning, effective management of power sector institutions, and the enforcement of power sector regulations as the ways forward.