Mahama talks nuclear in Moscow. Ghana already picked America and China, and still has no contract

President John Mahama has told an audience in Moscow that Ghana is "even looking at nuclear, adding nuclear to our energy mix", and that Russia "has advanced technology in some of these things". He spoke on stage during the Russia-Africa Summit, in a clip carried by TV3, ahead of a bilateral meeting with President Vladimir Putin.

Nuclear power has a long history between the two countries. On 25 November 1964 Kwame Nkrumah laid the foundation stone at Kwabenya, north of Accra, for a small Soviet-supplied research reactor of 2 megawatts. In his speech he said it would not be used for weapons. A 2019 interview in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists puts the project at about 90 per cent complete when Nkrumah was overthrown in February 1966. That is one report. The reactor was never commissioned, and the building is still standing. Ghana's first working research reactor came in December 1994: GHARR-1, a 30-kilowatt Chinese reactor built for research, not power.

Russia's state nuclear company, Rosatom, came back later. It signed a memorandum with Ghana in 2012 and an agreement in 2015 covering 1,000–1,200 MW units, and it took part in the vendor contest that began in 2021. But on 27 March 2025 Nuclear Power Ghana announced two other winners: NuScale and Regnum of the United States for 12 small modular reactors of 77 MW each, and China National Nuclear Corporation for one 1,200 MW plant. GNA reported that no formal contract had been signed. The target is about 1,000 MW of nuclear on the grid by 2034. According to the World Nuclear Association, Nuclear Power Ghana reported early in 2026 that insufficient funding was delaying detailed site studies.

TV3's caption said the Putin talks would focus on "deepening security cooperation". In the clip itself the President spoke about energy, nuclear and investment, not security. No readout of the bilateral meeting had been published when this story went live.