When it comes to electricity, several African developing nations confront a "twofold tragedy." The rate of access to power is minimal, and those who do experience frequent outages have significant consequences. Ongoing attempts are being made to expand access to energy throughout the continent. However, the necessity to increase electrical supply stability gets little concern. Unreliable power has negative effects on customers by reducing energy use and the advantages that should result from having an electrical connection. Using data obtained from 400 ECG users and 33 in-depth interviews, this research investigates the effect of prepaid meter problems in Ghana as well as potential solutions. The research used descriptive and logistic regression methods to examine socioeconomic characteristics, perceptions, recommendations, and self-reported effects of the recent October 2022 Prepaid Meter Issues (O22PMI) in Ghana. The O22PMI was determined to have a negative influence on the daily activities and security (89.5%) of respondents. Lack of public trust, approved illegal connections, worry, frustrations, and fear, insufficient resources and personnel at the ECG, business and financial losses, and the destruction of household appliances were key themes that emerged from the research. Income and residence are significant indicators of the self-reported impacts of the outage. The O22PMI was more likely to affect those with incomes below the federal minimum wage. To avoid future prepaid metering failures and frequent power outages, it is recommended that the government and other ECG stakeholders help in the deployment of stable systems and new innovations to increase power capacity.
Students at universities are becoming recognized as a vulnerable populace, with much greater rates of depression and workload/activities than the overall population amidst COVID-19. As such, the present research intends to document the extent of self-reported impact on university students' everyday accademic lives and incomes. In August of 2021, a cross-sectional, self-administered internet-based poll was conducted among Ghanaian university students in Kumasi. The data was retrieved from the internet using Microsoft Excel and then analyzed using STATA software version 14. Both univariate and logistic regression analysis were performed, with a p-value<0.05 regarded statistically significant (*). The study included 430 participants, majority of whom were single (98.6%), young adults (89.8%), and Christians (90.7%). This survey found that 52.1% said the COVID-19 epidemic has a highly significant impact on their daily activities and income. Among other risk factors considered by the study, only students with a perceived risk of COVID-19 infection are approximately three times more likely to be affected by the pandemic in their daily academic activities and incomes than those who were not (Adj. OR = 2.516, 95CI% = 1.551–4.081, p < 0.001). The knowledge advanced by this study will educate stakeholders and aid policy-makers in higher education in improving public educational provisions. The results of this study may be used to predict the future effects of the pandemic. The novelty of this research also lies in its self-reported approach to analyzing the effect of the pandemic on the income and everyday academic activities of university students in Kumasi.
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