How a $125m plant meant to fix Teshie-Nungua’s water crisis became a $235m judgment debt

Ghana Water Company Limited has been ordered to pay $235 million to the Spanish owners of the Teshie-Nungua desalination plant, a facility built to end chronic shortages in the enclave and shut since October 2025. The Republic of Ghana is liable for the money under a sovereign guarantee Parliament approved in 2012. Two final arbitral awards were rendered on 17 September against Ghana Water and the Republic.

Cox Infrastructure Group, which owns 95 percent of the plant’s project company, disclosed them to the Spanish securities market on 21 September. The $235 million, net of taxes, covers termination payments under the Water Purchase Agreement, with interest accruing from 1 April 2026 until the money is actually paid. The utility must also partially reimburse the company’s legal costs, and its own counterclaims, including one for $144.5 million, were substantially dismissed.

The award is nearly twice what the plant cost to build. The government’s 2024 report on public private partnerships puts the project at $125 million. It also arrives six months after the government said the matter was all but settled.

Ghana Water says they are yet to take a decision on this judgment. In March, Works and Housing Minister Kenneth Gilbert Adjei told journalists during a tour of the Weija treatment plant that a deal was close. “I know one headache that we are having as a country is the Teshie desalination plant,” he said.

“His Excellency the President has directed myself, the Finance Minister and the Attorney General to ensure that we get it resolved. The owners of the plant were in town. Very soon we will conclude it and the plant will start working.” Interest on the award began running about three weeks before he spoke.

The guarantee that now binds the Republic was not an accident of drafting. The taps went off first Ghana Water shut the plant in October 2025 over unresolved contractual obligations and what it called a culture of missing maintenance. Teshie, Nungua, Baatsona, Spintex, Sakumono and parts of La have been dry or rationed ever since.