Citizen Qwesi

Citizen Qwesi Public Conscience | Sharp Ink | Bold Lines | Ghana First.

The $235 Million Glass of WaterIf a glass of water ends with a US$235 million question, the country must pause before it...
24/09/2026

The $235 Million Glass of Water

If a glass of water ends with a US$235 million question, the country must pause before it argues. Not because public water should be cheap by slogan, or infrastructure should be built by hope, but because essential services carry a special public duty. When water is involved, every contract is more than paperwork. It is a promise made in the name of households, hospitals, schools, markets and communities.

That is why the reported arbitral award linked to the Accra desalination plant deserves sober attention. According to market disclosures by Cox Infrastructure Group, Befesa Desalination Developments Ghana Limited received notice of two final arbitral awards connected to proceedings against Ghana Water Company Limited and the Republic of Ghana over the Accra desalination plant and the related sovereign guarantee. The filing says Ghana Water is required to pay US$235 million, net of taxes, in termination payments under the Water Purchase Agreement, with accrued interest from 1 April 2026 until actual payment, and that the Republic is obliged under the sovereign guarantee to satisfy the amounts awarded, subject to no double recovery.

That is the legal headline. The public headline is simpler: a project presented around water now stands before the country as a bill. The citizen may not know every clause of the agreement, every operational dispute, every technical argument or every claim and counterclaim. But the citizen understands the moral shape of the matter. If public infrastructure is badly conceived, badly supervised, badly exited or badly explained, the ordinary person pays twice. First through weak service. Then through the public purse.
This is not an argument against private investment. Ghana needs serious capital and technical competence. But when a private arrangement touches a public necessity, the terms cannot remain private mystery until the bill becomes public pain.

Water is too basic for casual governance. A desalination plant is not a campaign prop. It is not a ribbon-cutting photograph. It is not a line item that can be praised in one administration and abandoned in another without consequence. It is an infrastructure commitment with engineering risks, revenue assumptions, performance obligations, termination clauses, dispute procedures and possible sovereign exposure. If those risks are not properly understood before signature, they do not disappear. They wait.
The uncomfortable question is not only who won the arbitration. It is who protected the public interest before the arbitration became necessary. Who tested the cost of termination before the contract was signed? Who monitored whether the project was delivering value? Who reported early signs of trouble? Who advised on the sovereign guarantee? Who explained to citizens what Ghana was taking on in their name? Who carried the institutional memory when officials changed, politics shifted and the project entered difficulty?

Too often, Ghana debates these matters only when the damage has matured. By then, the story has moved from policy to lawyers, from service delivery to claims, from public need to financial exposure. The public hears of awards, guarantees and accrued interest after the important decisions have already passed through offices, boardrooms and ministries.
A better way is possible, and it does not require Ghana to fear big infrastructure. It requires Ghana to respect big obligations. Before essential-service contracts are signed, there should be clearer public-interest review, stronger publication of non-sensitive contract risks, independent assessment of termination exposure, and regular reporting on whether the project is delivering the service for which the public ultimately carries the burden. Sovereign guarantees should not be treated as ceremonial comfort letters. They are potential public liabilities and should be handled with that seriousness.

The better way is also not to turn every failed project into a partisan trophy. That may satisfy the loudest voices, but it rarely fixes the institutional habit. If Ghana wants to learn, the question must move beyond which political season produced the problem. It must ask what public systems allowed the risk to grow.
This is where CQ stands: not against investment, not against infrastructure, not against difficult decisions, but against a public culture where ordinary people inherit the cost of decisions they were never allowed to understand. Water is a right. Competence is a duty. Accountability is the bridge between the two.
The US$235 million glass of water should not become just another number in Ghana’s long memory of expensive public lessons. It should become a turning point in how we sign, supervise, disclose, exit and learn.

Because when the bill is public, the questions must also be public.

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Read the story at https://thenewrepublicgh.com/the-235-million-glass-of-water/

23/09/2026

I have been away for a while.

After the Accra floods series, work took me off the page and into another assignment. In that time, Ghana kept speaking. Some stories deserved a CQ eye, and I was not here to meet them.

I am sorry for the silence.

But I have not stopped watching. I have not stopped asking. I have not stopped believing that this country deserves sharper questions and better answers.

CQ is back.

THE HARD TRUTH — ACCRA MUST CHOOSE BETWEEN PLANNING AND FLOODINGPart 7 of 7After six parts, the evidence has brought us ...
10/08/2026

THE HARD TRUTH — ACCRA MUST CHOOSE BETWEEN PLANNING AND FLOODING
Part 7 of 7
After six parts, the evidence has brought us here. Accra does not flood because Ghana has never studied the problem. We have studied it. We have mapped it. We have written laws for it. We have created institutions for it. We have borrowed money to fix it. We have designed drains, detention ponds and early-warning systems. We have demolished structures. We have dredged channels. We have made promises in manifestos. YET Accra still floods. The hard truth is that the city has reached the point where it must choose between planning and flooding because we cannot keep choosing both. Parts 1 and 2 followed the water through the city. Parts 3 and 4 followed the land and the law. Part 5 looked at wetlands and Ramsar sites. Part 6 looked at manifestos, master plans, GARID and the missing ex*****on. The same pattern kept appearing. Water needs space. Accra keeps taking that space away.

The Odaw River catchment is one of the clearest examples. Research found built-up land increasing from about 40% of the catchment in 2000 to 65% in 2020, while woodland fell from 10.5% to 4%. The same research found that replacing a given area of woodland with the same area of built-up land could increase peak discharge about 3.5 times. That is what urbanisation means in flood terms. More roofs. More concrete. More roads. Less infiltration. Faster runoff. More water reaching the drainage system in less time.
Densu tells the same story. A 2024 study of the Densu Delta Ramsar landscape found built-up land increasing from 20.7% in 2003 to 66% in 2023. Vegetation fell from 39.7% to 9.2%. Water also declined. Over those twenty years, about 1,912 hectares of vegetation became built-up land. Another 789 hectares of bare land became built-up. Built-up land gained about 2,907 hectares overall. Vegetation lost about 2,214 hectares. Water lost about 494 hectares. The building count rose too. From 43,243 buildings in 2013 to 46,850 in 2023. That is not a theory about urban pressure. That is urban pressure counted building by building.
Sakumo is even harder to ignore.Research found built-up land increasing from 1.06% in 2000 to 45.26% in 2023. Floodplain fell from 82.22% to 21.72%. Water fell from 5.62% to 2.02%. Separate UAV research estimated that about 38.3% of the wetland had already been lost to encroachment, with development entering parts of the 100-metre buffer. Then came demolitions and more demolitions. In April 2026, authorities announced another major demolition at Sakumo after earlier exercises. The Greater Accra Regional Minister said illegal construction, waste dumping and urban pressure had reduced the wetland’s core area from about 13 square kilometres to roughly 8.2 square kilometres.
That is the cycle we must break. Encroachment. Warning. More encroachment. Flooding. Demolition. Political pressure. Then another structure begins somewhere else. That is not flood management. It is permanent catch-up. The laws already exist. Act 925 provides Ghana’s land-use and spatial-planning framework. LUSPA exists to regulate spatial planning and development control, including sensitive areas such as wetlands, water bodies and water catchments. L.I. 1630 says flood-prone land requires adequate flood-control provision. It regulates reclaimed land. It addresses building over drains, culverts and watercourses. L.I. 1659 protects Ghana’s Ramsar sites. Core areas can be designated and demarcated, and physical development is prohibited within those designated core areas. Act 1085 created the Ghana Hydrological Authority to plan, design, execute, operate and maintain flood-control and drainage systems. Its work includes drainage master plans, stormwater systems, hydraulic analysis, floodways and retention structures.

The Lands Commission is supposed to do more than register interests in land. Its own mandate includes helping to ensure that individual land development fits the relevant development plan and working against encroachment, unapproved development schemes, multiple or illegal land sales and land speculation. EPA has an environmental-control role. NADMO has disaster-preparedness and warning responsibilities. District Assemblies control local development and building permits. NDPC coordinates national development planning. GARID is financing and implementing major flood-control works. The Ghana Hydrological Authority exists. LUSPA exists.

Responsibility can no longer disappear inside the sentence: “The authorities must do something.” We know who the authorities are and we know what must be done. The ex*****on record tells us where the system breaks.

The Auditor-General examined flood-control work between 2015 and 2019. The target was 110 kilometres of drains. Delivery was 12.2 kilometres. About 11%. Retention ponds were targeted for 18 drainage basins. The number completed during the audit period was zero. The audit also found delayed projects and weak maintenance. Drains lost carrying capacity to weeds, silt and debris because maintenance was not adequately prioritised and funded.
Building a drain is not the end of the job. The drain must remain a drain and not a refuse dump or a market extension or a building line or a place to push silt until the rains come. The drain should not be infrastructure that receives attention only when television cameras arrive.

GARID was supposed to change the approach by treating the Odaw Basin as a system. The World Bank approved US$200 million in 2019 and another US$150 million in 2023. The programme includes dredging, major drainage works, solid-waste interventions, community upgrading, detention storage and flood early warning. There has been progress. Odaw dredging is underway. Major drainage works are underway. The Greater Accra Flood Early Warning System has now been established. The latest World Bank project record resolves an uncertainty raised in Part 6: by January 2026, the FEWS was reported as fully established and operational. That is an achievement but early warning tells you water is coming. It does not create somewhere for the water to go and that is why the detention ponds matter.
At the end of 2025, GARID’s recorded upstream floodwater detention capacity was still zero, against a final target of one million cubic metres. Designs for the Atomic East and Atomic West detention ponds had been completed, but by July 2026 the works were still being taken through market engagement ahead of procurement and construction. GARID also shows that ex*****on is not simply about shouting at engineers. The World Bank’s 2026 restructuring record documents financing restrictions, delayed contractor payments, compensation and resettlement delays and slow implementation.
By April 2026, about US$137.7 million, roughly 40% of the US$350 million financing envelope, had been disbursed. For 2026, the project estimated that it needed about US$40.8 million to execute the programme, while the expenditure allocation was roughly US$17.5 million. There had also been a long interruption in disbursements under government fiscal controls. Contractors slowed down with some partially demobilized. Costs increased and construction timelines moved.

Resettlement issues will matter too. Major drainage infrastructure needs land and that land has people on it. These people have homes, businesses and livelihoods. The 2026 World Bank documentation reported more than 3,370 project-affected persons profiled in the resettlement process, with compensation delays affecting the sequencing of some works. So the answer cannot simply be “demolish everything.”
Planning must prevent new occupation and enforcement must come early and where public infrastructure genuinely requires displacement, compensation, relocation and livelihood safeguards must be handled before construction pushes people aside. That is part of ex*****on too.

There is another uncomfortable fact. In March 2026, NDPC and LUSPA themselves acknowledged persistent problems with development control, enforcement, political interference, weak coordination and capacity constraints. They agreed that development planning and spatial planning needed to be better integrated. That is important because it confirms what the physical evidence has been saying throughout this series. A development plan that does not control physical development is only paper. A spatial plan that does not control permits is only a map. A permit condition that is not inspected is only a sentence. A demolition notice that comes after occupation is an expensive admission that prevention failed. A Ramsar boundary nobody can see becomes an argument. A drain reservation that can be sold becomes somebody’s future flood. A project without cash flow becomes an unfinished site. A retention pond without protected land remains a drawing and a manifesto without ex*****on becomes the next manifesto.

So what must change?

First, Greater Accra needs one authoritative flood-risk and development-control map shared by LUSPA, the Ghana Hydrological Authority, Lands Commission, EPA, District Assemblies and the institutions responsible for Ramsar protection. One map. One set of drainage reservations. One set of flood-risk zones. Clear Ramsar core areas and buffers. Clear cadastral parcels. Clear development restrictions. These must be publicly accessible so nobody buys land and later says nobody knew.

Second, land ownership must stop being confused with development permission. A land document cannot make a watercourse disappear. A registered interest cannot make a floodplain safe. A sale cannot change hydrology. Before a high-risk parcel receives development approval, the planning, drainage and environmental questions must be answered.

Third, enforcement must move forward in time. Do not wait for the roof. Do not wait for tenants. Do not wait for the church congregation. Do not wait for the shop to open. Stop unlawful filling when the truck arrives. Stop the wall at foundation level. Stop the structure before it becomes a political constituency. Enforcement after occupation will always be harder than prevention.

Fourth, build the flood-storage infrastructure. The Atomic East and West detention ponds need to move from design and procurement into completed physical storage. The broader city needs a network of retention and detention capacity based on current hydrology, not isolated projects that simply push water downstream. The Auditor-General found zero delivery against 18 planned retention basins in the earlier programme. That failure cannot become a permanent tradition.

Fifth, protect the land those structures require. You cannot plan a retention pond today and allow houses on the site tomorrow. You cannot reserve a drainage corridor and regularise encroachment later. Flood infrastructure begins with land protection.

Sixth, maintenance must be funded as infrastructure. Every major drain and detention facility needs an asset register, inspection schedule, maintenance responsibility and recurring budget. Not emergency money when the clouds gather. Routine money because the drain exists.

Seventh, Ramsar boundaries and core areas must be clearly demarcated and made public. Not only in reports. On the ground. On planning maps. On digital land systems. At Assembly offices. At the Lands Commission. Visible to prospective buyers before money changes hands. The Sakumo demolition cycle shows what happens when protection remains weaker than development pressure.

Eighth, procurement and funding must match the reality of major infrastructure. If government signs a multi-year drainage contract, financing must be programmed across the life of that contract. Contractors cannot construct concrete with promises. Compensation cannot be paid with announcements. Projects that repeatedly stop and restart cost more and finish later. GARID’s recent experience makes that plain.

Ninth, resettlement must be planned as part of engineering, not as an obstacle discovered after engineering. Affected households must be identified early. Compensation must be timely. Livelihoods must be considered. Relocation must not simply move poor households from one dangerous place to another and future encroachment must be prevented so that government does not pay to clear the same corridor twice.

Tenth, the Flood Early Warning System must now be treated as permanent public infrastructure. It is operational. Keep it operational. Maintain the sensors. Maintain the radar. Maintain the communications. Train the people. Run drills. Test how quickly a warning moves from GMet and hydrological monitoring to NADMO, local authorities and the person sleeping in the flood-prone room. An early-warning system is successful only when the warning arrives early enough for somebody to act.

Eleventh, government agencies must stop behaving as though the flood respects institutional boundaries. Water does not know which drain belongs to which Assembly. It does not know whether a wetland is under Wildlife, EPA, Lands Commission or Local Government. It does not stop at a ministerial mandate. Accra needs basin management in which the same map, data and project schedule are visible across agencies. NDPC and LUSPA have already acknowledged the coordination problem. Now it must be fixed.

Citizens have responsibilities too. We must stop buying land first and investigating later. Stop treating every open space as wasted land. Stop tolerating the filling of wetlands because the developer is powerful. Stop accepting the argument that a land document automatically proves a site should be built upon. Stop defending illegal development because the owner belongs to our party, church, family, community or association. Stop asking politicians to interfere with planning enforcement on our behalf. Stop throwing solid waste into drains and then blaming only the rain when the same drain fails. Stop demanding demolition when somebody else builds in a waterway and regularisation when it is our own building. The citizen must stop demanding exemptions from the enforcement we say we want.

The state must also enforce. The Lands Commission itself identifies encroachment, unapproved schemes, multiple and illegal land sales as problems requiring control. NDPC and LUSPA have acknowledged political interference as part of the planning challenge. National government must fund and coordinate. The responsible Ministries must execute. LUSPA must defend the plan. The Ghana Hydrological Authority must defend the drainage system and deliver the engineering. District Assemblies must control development before it becomes permanent. EPA must defend environmental requirements. The Lands Commission must help prevent the land market from defeating the development plan. NADMO must make warning and preparedness work at community level. NDPC must make sure plans become measurable programmes and budgets. The courts must resolve legitimate disputes fairly and promptly. Citizens must stop rewarding indiscipline and political parties must stop treating flood control as an announcement to be rediscovered every four years.

Greater Accra has now become the first region in Ghana where all MMDAs have secured certification of their 2026–2029 medium-term development plans. That is good but NDPC itself gave the warning that matters most: Certification must become implementation. That is the whole series in one sentence.

Part 1 showed that planning matters. Part 2 showed that water follows a system. Part 3 showed what happens when flood space becomes real estate. Part 4 showed that Ghana already has laws. Part 5 showed that Ramsar sites are not empty land. Part 6 showed that Ghana has manifestos, master plans, projects and institutions. Part 7 leaves us with the part nobody can outsource and that part is Discipline.

The discipline to refuse the permit. The discipline to protect the buffer. The discipline to finish the pond. The discipline to pay the contractor on time. The discipline to compensate affected people properly. The discipline to maintain the drain after the ribbon is cut. The discipline to prosecute where the law requires it. The discipline to stop our own people from interfering. The discipline to tell a buyer that some land must never become a building. The discipline to follow the plan after the election because Accra’s flooding is now a governance question.

Climate change can make extreme rainfall harder to manage but climate change does not issue building permits. Rainfall does not sell wetlands. The clouds do not fill Ramsar sites with laterite. The sea does not approve estates on flood-storage land. Gravity does not interfere with enforcement. Those decisions are ours.

Part 6 showed that Ghana does not lack promises.
Part 7 ends with the harder truth:
We cannot keep planning for drainage while planning over the places that drain.
We cannot keep borrowing to control floods while allowing new development to manufacture more flood risk.
We cannot keep demolishing yesterday’s encroachment while permitting tomorrow’s.
We cannot keep calling every disaster “natural” when part of the damage was approved, tolerated, sold, filled, built or ignored by human beings.
Water will take the route available to it. If we protect that route, we have planning. If we build over it, the water will find another route. Through a road. Through a market. Through a school. Through somebody’s home. That is not water misbehaving. That is the bill arriving.
After seven parts, there is nowhere left for the responsibility to hide.
The maps exist. The laws exist. The institutions exist. The evidence exists. The money, though insufficient and uneven, is being spent. The engineering solutions are known. What remains is whether we have the discipline to execute them.
Accra cannot vote against gravity.
It can only decide whether to plan for it. That is the choice.
Planning or flooding.
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Manifestos, Master Plans and the Missing Ex*****on | Part 6 of 7Accra has not lacked plans. It has lacked ex*****on at t...
10/08/2026

Manifestos, Master Plans and the Missing Ex*****on | Part 6 of 7

Accra has not lacked plans. It has lacked ex*****on at the speed, scale and consistency the flood problem requires. In the earlier parts, we followed the water. We looked at the Odaw–Korle system, the tributaries, the drains, the outfalls, the occupation of flood space, the laws, the wetlands and the Ramsar sites.
Part 6 asks the next question. After decades of knowing the problem, what exactly has Ghana promised to do about Accra’s flooding, and what has actually been delivered? The planning history is not new.

Accra had a drainage master plan as far back as 1963. A later roads-and-drainage study begun around 1990 included revision of that master plan so roadside drains could discharge properly through the city’s main outlets to the sea. That does not mean a 1963 plan should still control modern Accra. It means Ghana has known for decades that Accra’s drainage problem requires planning, engineering and coordination.
Yet decades later, the Auditor-General found that the Hydrological Services Department was still operating without the drainage master plans needed for coordinated flood-control infrastructure. The Ministry and the Department had included preparation of drainage master plans in sector medium-term development plans from 2013, but the audit found they were not prioritised, properly planned or properly budgeted for. That is where the ex*****on gap begins. A plan enters the policy document. It does not always enter the budget. A promise enters the manifesto. It does not always become a completed drain, a retention pond, a maintained channel or a protected waterway.

In the 2016 NPP manifesto, the party promised to construct storm drains in Accra and other cities to deal with recurring floods. It also promised to establish a National Hydrology Authority responsible for drainage, flood-control measures, major dams, sea defence, storm drains, constant dredging and desilting of waterways. That institutional promise was eventually delivered. In 2022, Parliament passed the Ghana Hydrological Authority Act, creating the Ghana Hydrological Authority. The Authority now has responsibility for planning, design, ex*****on, operation and maintenance of flood-control mechanisms, drainage improvement works, coastal engineering and hydrology. Its Drainage Unit is responsible for stormwater drainage planning, drainage master plans, hydraulic analysis, retention structures, rehabilitation and technical support to local authorities. That is progress but creating an institution is not the same as funding the infrastructure it needs to build.

In July 2024, the Works and Housing Minister announced GH¢1.5 million in seed funding for the Ghana Hydrological Fund. At the same event, he said only about 2% of drainage channels in Greater Accra that required concrete lining had been addressed. That one figure says a lot. The Authority exists. The drainage deficit remains much bigger than the resources immediately available to fix it. The clearest numerical evidence comes from the Auditor-General’s performance audit of flood-control works by the Ministry of Works and Housing and the former Hydrological Services Department between 2015 and 2019. More than GH¢117.7 million had been spent on the construction and maintenance of drains and culverts during the period reviewed. The Department targeted 110 kilometres of drains. It delivered 12.2 kilometres. That is about 11% of the target.
The same programme targeted retention ponds for 18 drainage basins. The Auditor-General found that none had been constructed during the audit period. Retention ponds matter because they temporarily hold stormwater upstream and release it after pressure in the downstream drainage system falls. They reduce the volume of water arriving in the main channel at the same time. Without that storage, more water moves faster into drains that may already be narrow, blocked, silted, undersized or surrounded by development. The audit also found that 20 out of 27 sampled drainage projects, representing 74%, experienced delays. One reason was delayed payment to contractors, causing some contractors to suspend work. The audit also found inadequate monitoring and inspection, and reported defects in some completed works.

Then there was maintenance. Completed and existing drains were not properly maintained because maintenance was not prioritised in annual activity plans and budgets. Weeds, silt and debris reduced the ability of drains to carry water. That is a major point. Flood control is not only about building drains. A drain can be built and still fail. A channel can be widened and still lose capacity. A culvert can be installed and still become a bottleneck. Infrastructure without maintenance becomes another flood risk.

Then came GARID. In May 2019, the World Bank approved US$200 million for the Greater Accra Resilient and Integrated Development Project. The first phase focused on the Odaw River Basin and was designed to improve flood-risk management, solid-waste management and infrastructure in vulnerable communities. More than 2.5 million people in the basin were expected to benefit. GARID was not designed as another ordinary desilting exercise. Its flood programme included performance-based dredging of the Odaw and its tributaries, upstream flood-retention basins, sand traps, rehabilitation of major drains, replacement of bridges that obstruct flow, rehabilitation of the Korle Lagoon Interceptor Weir, reconfiguration of the Odaw outlet toward the sea and improvement of a Flood Early Warning System. That is the kind of basin-wide approach Accra needs but GARID also shows how long the distance can be between project approval and physical delivery. The project website described the initial phase as a five-year programme covering 2020 to 2025.

Then COVID-19 intervened. In 2020, US$65 million from GARID’s emergency-response component was triggered for Ghana’s pandemic response. In 2023, the World Bank approved another US$150 million for GARID. The additional financing was needed partly to replace the financing gap created by the COVID response, pay resettlement compensation for about 2,800 project-affected persons, and meet cost increases caused by inflation and additional engineering requirements. So the commonly quoted US$350 million GARID figure needs context.It is the original US$200 million plus US$150 million additional financing. It does not mean US$350 million has already been spent on Accra drains. GARID also covers solid-waste management, community upgrading, institutional measures, resettlement and other components. Part of the original financing was activated for COVID emergency response. That distinction matters because political language often turns commitments into achievements before the public sees the completed infrastructure.

The 2024 NPP manifesto said the government had invested US$350 million in dealing with flooding in the Odaw Basin through GARID. It also said the National Flood Control Programme had constructed 10 kilometres of new drains and lined 36 kilometres of channels. The manifesto promised to strengthen the Ghana Hydrological Authority, enforce land-use controls in drainage basins and use technology, digitisation and artificial intelligence for flood mitigation and early warning.
The 2024 NDC commitments also returned to familiar flood-control tools: water-retention and detention reservoirs in flood-prone communities, improved drainage in Accra and other cities, maintenance of systems including the Odaw, regular desilting by local governments and construction of storm drainage in critical urban areas.
Different parties. Similar vocabulary. Storm drains. Dredging. Desilting. Retention ponds. Detention reservoirs. Early warning. Land-use control. Maintenance. Flood mitigation.
The problem is not that Ghana’s political system does not know what to say as it clearly does. The problem is delivery.

Take the GARID detention ponds. In 2019, upstream flood-retention ponds were already part of the World Bank-approved approach for reducing downstream flooding in the Odaw Basin. In April 2023, the Works and Housing Minister said the technical team was still finalising the design of retention ponds around the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission area. On 27 July 2026, GARID held an Early Market Engagement conference for major infrastructure works. The packages included the Atomic-East Detention Pond at GAEC, estimated at US$22.11 million, and the Atomic-West Detention Pond, estimated at US$20.33 million. The same engagement covered Alajo drainage improvements, reconstruction of the Abbosey Okai Bridge, Nima-Paloma/Odawna drainage works and a sanitary landfill.
That does not mean GARID has done nothing. Performance-based dredging of the Odaw Basin began in February 2024 under a four-year arrangement. Works have proceeded at Achimota-Abofu, Nima-Paloma, Kaneshie and other locations. GARID has also provided grants to 17 Greater Accra assemblies for drain maintenance and solid-waste management, including more than GH¢7 million distributed in 2023 and more than GH¢8 million in 2024.
There is active work but the timing still matters. Seven years after GARID was approved, some of its major flood-storage and drainage works were still moving through market engagement and procurement in mid-2026. COVID diversion, additional financing, resettlement compensation, inflation and engineering revisions explain part of that timeline. They do not erase the timeline.

The Flood Early Warning System tells the same story. GARID identified flood warning as a core intervention from the beginning. In 2022, GARID-supported flood simulations in five Greater Accra municipalities exposed coordination weaknesses, and officials said a Flood Early Warning System was being established. In April 2023, government announced that the design was complete and that a service provider would be engaged for deployment. By December 2023, equipment had been procured for the Ghana Hydrological Authority, Water Resources Commission, Ghana Meteorological Agency and NADMO. In June 2024, government said a service provider had been engaged to set up and operationalise the platform, and that equipment had been installed in various basins. The target was to complete operationalisation before the following rainy season. By February 2026, the Works Minister and the Ghana Hydrological Authority were still publicly discussing the need to strengthen flood-management systems and enhance early-warning mechanisms.
The official record reviewed shows design, procurement, equipment deployment and institutional coordination. It does not clearly show a later official notice confirming that the full Greater Accra Flood Early Warning System had been commissioned and was fully operational. That should not be overstated either way as early warning is not simply a radar/ equipment purchase. It requires GMet data, hydrological monitoring, modelling, communication systems, NADMO response, functioning local disaster committees and a reliable method of getting warnings to people before the water arrives. A warning can reduce loss. It cannot replace drains, retention ponds, protected wetlands, maintained channels and enforcement against building in waterways.

The wider planning system also exists.
NDPC’s Vision 2057 is meant to provide Ghana’s long-term national development framework. Four-year medium-term frameworks are supposed to flow from it, then institutional development plans, annual action plans and budgets. NDPC launched a terminal evaluation of the 2022–2025 Medium-Term National Development Policy Framework to examine implementation, results, challenges and lessons before preparation of the next framework. The 2026–2029 planning framework now guides institutional plans. In September 2025, NDPC approved medium-term plans including those of the Ministry of Works, Housing and Water Resources and the Greater Accra Regional Coordinating Council.
The breakdown is what happens after the document. The Auditor-General showed one part of the failure. A project can appear in a medium-term plan without receiving enough money. A master plan can be proposed without being produced. A drain can be budgeted without funds being released on time. A contractor can mobilise and then suspend work because payment is delayed. A completed drain can exist without a maintenance budget. A retention pond can remain a target without becoming a pond.

GARID shows another part of the difficulty.
Large flood-control projects require designs, procurement, land, compensation, relocation of affected people and utilities, environmental safeguards, engineering revisions and coordination among several ministries, agencies and local governments. That is real but the city also keeps changing while projects are being designed. The World Bank has identified rapid development in flood-risk areas, inadequate and poorly maintained drainage, and solid-waste accumulation in waterways as major drivers of Greater Accra’s flooding.
In June 2026, the Ghana Hydrological Authority said changing rainfall patterns, rapid urbanisation and increasing development pressure are producing flooding even in locations not previously identified as flood-prone. That means government is trying to build against a moving target but government also controls part of that target. It controls permits. It controls zoning. It controls enforcement. It controls public drainage reservations. It controls whether structures in waterways are stopped before completion. That is why engineering alone cannot solve Accra’s flooding.
In March 2025, President John Mahama announced that illegal structures obstructing waterways would be demolished and referred specifically to encroachment on water-retention areas and Ramsar sites. The Works Ministry later said flood control requires coordination among Works, Roads, Local Government, MMDAs and other institutions, because building drains has limited effect where assemblies fail to enforce development control or road projects do not provide functioning drainage. On 24 July 2026, the Presidency announced that a flood-mitigation task force had begun a phased dredging and demolition exercise across Accra.
That is action but it also raises the question running through this entire series. Why must Accra keep returning to emergency dredging, emergency demolition and rainy-season intervention when the planning rules, institutions, engineering proposals and flood maps already exist?
The answer is not one dramatic failure. It is accumulation. Delayed funding. Incomplete infrastructure. Slow procurement. Delayed compensation. Resettlement complications. Weak maintenance. Projects without current master plans. Plans without budgets. Budgets without timely releases. Drains without protection. Wetlands under pressure. Waterways occupied while enforcement waits. Solid waste reducing channel capacity. Multiple agencies sharing one problem. Political promises that are easier to announce in an election cycle than major drainage infrastructure is to complete within one.

Despite the failures, Ghana has made progress. The Ghana Hydrological Authority now exists. GARID is constructing drainage works. Odaw dredging is underway. Assemblies have received drainage-maintenance grants. Flood-warning equipment has been procured and deployed. New storm drains are under construction. Government has created a multi-agency flood task force. Major detention ponds remain in the pipeline. That last sentence however is the problem in miniature. Some of the most important things Accra needs have been “in the pipeline” for years. Manifestos have named them. Master plans have identified them. Audits have demanded them. Engineers have designed them. Development partners have financed them. Ministers have announced them. The missing element has repeatedly been full ex*****on, followed by maintenance and enforcement.

Parts 1 to 5 showed that Accra’s flooding is connected to how the city plans land, protects waterways, maintains drainage, treats wetlands and enforces its own laws.
Part 6 adds the final piece.
Ghana does not have a diagnosis problem. It has an ex*****on problem. Ex*****on means producing the drainage master plan. Funding it. Protecting the land it requires. Building the retention pond. Completing the drain. Maintaining the channel. Operating the warning system. Stopping the illegal structure before occupation. Keeping waste out. Coordinating the agencies. Continuing after the election. Continuing after the ribbon-cutting. Continuing after the rains stop.

That leaves one final question. After the laws, Ramsar protections, manifestos, master plans, audits, World Bank projects, institutions, dredging contracts, retention ponds and early-warning systems, there is nowhere else for responsibility to hide.

Accra must decide whether planning rules the city, or whether development pressure does.
Because water will follow the terrain whether a manifesto is implemented or not.
That is Part 7.
The Hard Truth — Accra Must Choose Between Planning and Flooding.
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