'Don't come here expecting America. It's not America.' Every long-stay returnee lands on the same doctrine: you have to be your own infrastructure. Medical care is best with money, power with backup, water with storage, internet with redundancy. Here's the full picture.
Power: dumsor never fully left
The 2012-16 crisis (12hrs on/24 off, ~$1B lost in 2014) eased, but ECG's $1.7B+ supplier debt, plant shutdowns and grid fires keep 2024-26 flare-ups coming - plus prepaid meters reportedly draining 3x fast. Returnees report 14-hour cuts, spoiled fridge food, and AC bills of $100-150/month where they run cooling. Setup: solar + inverter as baseline, generator for heavy loads, housing chosen for existing backup, router UPS for short cuts, cowork spaces mapped for long ones.
Water: bills without water
Taps dry for months - even a year - while Ghana Water bills keep arriving; families survive on poly-tanks and trucked water. Setup: overhead tank + booster pump standard; borehole where viable; never rent without confirming flow history with neighbours, not the landlord.
Internet: cheap per GB, pricey to live on
MTN holds ~81% of mobile data; ~40% of your data spend is levies; 11-99 fibre cuts a day at $3,200 a repair keep quality uneven. Mandated bigger bundles didn't lower entry prices. Setup: fibre home line + two mobile SIMs (MTN + Telecel), phone tethering ready, offline-first work habits.
Roads price everything
Good roads command premium rents; bad roads strand Ubers and ambulances alike. Flooding zones (Kasoa corridors, Weija downstream, Ramsar wetlands) destroy assets yearly - location diligence is infrastructure diligence.
Ask people living your target street how the lights, taps and mast behave - find them on Sporafind before you sign.