- Ghana’s Future Power Contracts Must Allow Termination Over Bribery — Samuel Bekoe
Ghana should include explicit anti-corruption clauses in future power purchase agreements and energy procurement contracts, allowing the state to terminate deals where bribery or other corrupt practices are established, according to Samuel Bekoe, Executive Director of the Centre for Extractives and Development Africa.
Mr Bekoe said the conviction in the United States of former Goldman Sachs banker and former Tema Oil Refinery Managing Director Asante Kwaku Berko should be treated as an opportunity to strengthen Ghana’s power-sector contracting and procurement framework. His proposal would move anti-corruption safeguards beyond general criminal law and place them directly inside the commercial agreements governing major electricity projects.
“It’s an opportunity for us to introduce this seriously; we have to bring in and have a clear anti-corruption rule within the contract so that in case there is any investigation that finds any corruption in there, we will have the opportunity and the mandate to either cancel or end business with any competitor who may have engaged in bribery or corruption,” Mr Bekoe said.
The proposal is significant because power agreements can bind governments to substantial financial commitments over many years. If corruption allegations emerge after a contract has been signed, the legal consequences may depend heavily on the wording of the agreement, meaning explicit termination rights could strengthen the state’s negotiating and enforcement position.
Mr Bekoe also wants transparency requirements built into both power purchase agreements and the procurement processes used to select companies for major energy projects. He argued that stronger disclosure would allow public institutions and citizens to scrutinise agreements before financial obligations become entrenched.
“Clear anti-corruption rules, transparency rules within our power purchase agreement, and also our procedures leading to selecting a company to build our power plant as well, which is the procurement process,” he said.
His intervention follows Berko’s conviction by a US federal jury over a bribery scheme connected to efforts to secure approvals for a Ghanaian power project involving AKSA Enerji. Ghana’s Economic and Organised Crime Office has subsequently said it is tracing transactions, beneficiaries, assets and proceeds that may be linked to suspected criminal conduct, with recovery action to be pursued where supported by evidence and permitted by law.
The case has reopened questions about how Ghana awards power contracts, particularly during periods of electricity shortages when governments face pressure to procure generation capacity quickly. Mr Bekoe separately argued that the use of emergency procedures during previous power crises weakened normal scrutiny and allowed critical governance safeguards to be bypassed.
“You ask about Parliament, which is supposed to be the gatekeeper, did not play a very good gatekeeping role,” he said, while arguing that Ghana should rely more heavily on long-term electricity demand projections rather than waiting until shortages create pressure for emergency procurement.
That criticism goes to the centre of Ghana’s power-sector contracting problem. Emergency procurement can accelerate the delivery of generation capacity, but compressed timelines can also reduce competition, limit due diligence and weaken the ability of Parliament, civil society and regulators to assess the long-term financial implications of agreements.
Mr Bekoe therefore also called for publication of power purchase agreements, rejecting the routine use of commercial confidentiality as justification for withholding contracts from public scrutiny. “I have gotten some of the PPAs and looked through them, and I don’t see any sensitive information in there,” he said.
There is a legitimate commercial argument for protecting genuinely sensitive information in complex contracts, including proprietary technology and certain pricing details. But blanket confidentiality can make it difficult to determine whether the state assumed excessive risks, whether procurement was competitive and whether contractual obligations represent value for money.
The Berko case has also revived scrutiny of the underlying economics of Ghana’s power contracts. Benjamin Boakye, Executive Director of the Africa Centre for Energy Policy, has called for the AKSA agreements and other power contracts to be reviewed, arguing that Ghana has sometimes contracted generation capacity it could not fully utilise.
Mr Boakye said the problem was not inherently the use of take-or-pay agreements but weaknesses in planning across generation, transmission, distribution and revenue collection. Where contracted electricity cannot be absorbed or used, Ghana may still face payment obligations, turning poor system planning into a fiscal cost.
That makes anti-corruption reform only one part of a larger governance challenge. A contract can be free from bribery and still be economically damaging if capacity assumptions are unrealistic, tariffs are poorly structured or liabilities are not properly understood.
The strongest reform would therefore combine anti-corruption termination clauses with competitive procurement, beneficial ownership disclosure, publication of contracts, demand forecasting and rigorous assessment of long-term fiscal exposure.
Such provisions could also change the incentives facing private investors. Companies would know that corruption discovered during or after procurement could threaten not only criminal sanctions against individuals but the commercial survival of the underlying agreement.
For Ghana, that distinction matters because the costs of flawed power contracts ultimately do not remain within the Ministry of Energy. They can filter into electricity tariffs, government arrears, public debt and taxpayer-funded interventions across the energy sector.
Mr Bekoe’s proposal therefore turns the Berko conviction into a broader institutional test. The issue is no longer only whether individuals connected to past transactions can be held accountable, but whether Ghana will redesign future contracts so that corruption itself becomes an explicit trigger for commercial consequences.
If that happens, the legacy of the case could extend beyond prosecutions and asset recovery. It could force Ghana to treat transparency and anti-corruption safeguards not as additions to power-sector contracting, but as essential protections against decades-long financial liabilities.
