The Volta River Authority (VRA) established the Northern Electricity Department (NED) in 1987 to
distribute electricity in the then Brong-Ahafo, Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions of
Ghana as part of its 161kV transmission grid extension to the northern parts of Ghana. In June 1994,
the Government of Ghana (GoG) initiated the Power Sector Reform (PSR) programme aimed at
bringing effi ciency and managerial effectiveness in the Energy Sector to improve service delivery to
all consumers.
In pursuant of the PSR, VRA Management, in 1997, registered the Northern Electricity
Distribution Company (NEDCo) as a wholly-owned VRA subsidiary, with a Board of Directors to take
over the operations of NEDCo. In May 2012, the VRA Management operationalized NEDCo as a
wholly-owned subsidiary. NEDCo’s current operations cover about 64% of the geographical area
of Ghana and is the sole distributor of electricity in the now Upper East, Upper West, North East,
Savannah, Northern, Brong-Ahafo, Bono East and parts of Oti, Ashanti and Western North regions.
NEDCo also manages VRA’s electricity supply to some border towns in Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire
and Togo. It was originally developed as an integral part of the larger Northern Electrifi cation and
System Reinforcement Project (NESRP), which connected the northern part of Ghana to the national
electricity grid. Customer population has, therefore, grown at an average rate of about 6.3% per
annum from less than 20,000 in 1987 to 997,203 as of 2020.
