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Accra’s water and electricity challenges will not see an end soon unless the city’s uncontrolled expansion is checked.

According to Mr Ede Ijjasz-Vasquez, the Senior Director of Social, Urban, Rural and Resilience of the World Bank Group, while the city’s expansion had made it less dense, compared to what it was in 1990, “it introduces inefficiencies in transport, energy and water distribution that will remain there forever if the control measures” were not implemented.

“If a city grows and sprawls in a disorganised way, it is not possible to change. Therefore, the decisions of today about how our cities grow have important implications, not just for the next 20 to 30 years but also generations to come.

“You cannot continue to have Accra growing and sprawling without room for efficiency. There is the need to get the city stable and productive,” he said. 

The senior World Bank official made the remark during a presentation in Accra during the release of Ghana’s Urbanisation Review (GUR) Overview Report which provides an analysis of Ghana’s rising urbanisation challenges and a framework to successfully overcome those challenges. 

The GUR, a collaboration among the World Bank, the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development and the Swiss Secretariat for Economic Affairs, takes stock of urbanisation in Ghana over the last two decades. 

The report 

Titled: “Rising through cities in Ghana”, the report is built around four priority areas — Integrated land planning for effective urban development, Strategic infrastructure development and improved regulation of the transport sector, Consolidating the gains made over the last 20 years of decentralisation by deepening fiscal decentralisation and exploring innovative ways for financing urban development and Institutional coordination and harmonisation. 

Mr Ijjasz-Vasquez observed that a city that  grew and sprawled could become inefficient forever, hence it was imperative that policies aimed at making the city efficient and productive for generations to come should compress the city.

The report did not paint only a gloomy picture. 

It stated that rapid urbanisation in Ghana over the past three decades had coincided with rapid gross domestic product (GDP) growth, helped create jobs, increased human capital, decreased poverty and expanded opportunities and improved living conditions for millions of Ghanaians.

However, in contrast, it indicated that although the country’s urbanisation in the last 20 years outpaced the West African average and was considerably faster than the global average, the experience did not meet the country’s level of development.

Mr Ijjasz-Vasquez commended the country for scoring high in labour reallocation, as migrants to the cities moved from mainly agricultural jobs to more productive sectors of the economy, a trend that he said might be reaching its limit because there might not be productive jobs in the cities in the future. 

Housing, sanitation and transportation

Ghana's 1.7 million housing deficit means that increasing demand for housing is competing with farmlands, particularly in peri-urban areas such as Dodowa, Pokuase, Amasaman, Ningo-Prampram and Afienya where farmlands are shrinking.

The report stated that about 90 per cent of housing in urban areas in the country was built without local authority control, with almost 60 per cent of households occupying single rooms and only 25 per cent of households owning their own homes.

It stated that solid waste disposal and sewerage remained a major challenge in cities and urban centres, increasing health risks and environmental damage, as well as indirectly increasing health care cost.

On transportation, it noted with concern the urban spatial expansion that had led to heightened transportation costs, higher commuting times and decreased agglomeration.  

Policy recommendations

To meet the challenges of urbanisation, the report said Ghana required stronger land use management and planning in municipal and metropolitan areas.  

On urban connectivity, it urged the authorities to, among other things, develop high capacity public transport systems in large metropolitan areas to improve intra-city connectivity and prioritise high-return transport infrastructure. 

It said underlying the country’s urban land market friction, poor transport connectivity and insufficient financing were weak institutional capacity and coordination. 

It, therefore, recommended building institutional strength through human capital development, the improvement of inter-jurisdictional coordination, complete decentralisation reforms and development of public-private partnerships (PPPs). 

Government response 

In a speech read on his behalf, the Vice-President, Mr Kwesi Bekoe Amissah-Arthur, observed that no nation had ever developed without urbanisation.

He pledged that the government would study the report and take the appropriate steps to implement the recommendations to ensure that the country attained a successful urban development. 

The Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Alhaji Collins Dauda, for his part, said the report dealt with crucial issues of municipal financing for urban infrastructure development.

“Through this, it is possible to wean off well-endowed metropolitan and municipal assemblies from central government transfers, since some of them have the capacity to be financially autonomous and can generate resources to invest in capital projects that will make their cities more productive, inclusive and resilient,” he said.