A Ghanaian poultry farmer has described mounting losses linked to ongoing power outages, warning that persistent “dumsor” is beginning to take a toll on livestock and livelihoods.
Michael Acheampong, who called into the Asaase Breakfast Show on Monday (27 April), said erratic electricity supply has disrupted operations on his farm, leading to the death of hundreds of birds during a recent outage.
“Any time we have prolonged power outage… the birds panic, crowd together and end up stepping on each other,” he said.
Acheampong, who keeps about 9,000 birds, said a recent overnight blackout resulted in the loss of 341 poultry, which he attributed to stampeding caused by sudden darkness.
“They sleep on themselves and it happens like that,” he explained, noting that young birds—particularly those at the grower stage—require continuous lighting to feed and remain calm.
He said he and his workers typically intervene during outages to disperse the birds and prevent overcrowding, but prolonged blackouts make it difficult to control the situation.
“This is not the first time,” he added, recalling a previous incident where 37 birds died under similar conditions.
The farmer’s account comes amid growing public frustration over power cuts, following a major disruption to Ghana’s electricity supply triggered by a fire at a substation linked to the Akosombo Dam.
The incident reportedly knocked nearly 1,000 megawatts off the national grid, straining a system with peak demand of about 4,400 megawatts.
While some have questioned the link between power outages and poultry deaths, Acheampong insists the impact is real and not political.
“I just want people to understand that this is a problem,” he said.
The outages have reignited concerns about the reliability of electricity supply in Ghana and its broader implications for small and medium-scale enterprises, particularly in agriculture.
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