Here We Go Again: Major Cities in Ghana Flood

Floods devastate Ghana’s major cities, especially Accra, and each year, the blame game resumes. It’s a circular-circus of finger-pointing involving three key players: citizens, planning and development control professionals, and the political class.

Citizens blame the planners and politician because

• It takes forever to get a permit to build. Don’t even start on the land title process. So, what do we do? We build now and regularize later. Damn the consequences.

• No sanitation infrastructure? No problem. We dump our waste anywhere. Especially in open drains, trusting that the rains will wash it away from our backyards into someone else’s misfortune.

Planning Professionals and Development Control Officers blame citizens for building in waterways and turning drains into dumping sites. It is definitely not their fault because

• they plan, but enforcement is not in their hands.

• they mark flood zones, designate where to build and where not to. If you don’t heed the advice, it’s your own problem.”

Who then is responsible?

The political class is blamed as the convenient absentee enforcer who pays lip service to urban planning and enforcement. Every year, government officials acknowledge the devastation and promise to act until the floods recede and business as usual resumes. You cant blame them too because

• Yes, they want to enforce development controls, but the chiefs own the land.

• They can't afford to be too radical in rule enforcement otherwise people will vote them out. And in a political system where holding office means access to wealth and influence, no one wants to rock the boat. So, the cycle continues.

We Know the Problem. We Know the Gaps.

1. A Striving, Planning System

Ghana tries to follow the British planning system, built on flexibility and discretion, yet fancies the Dutch model, built on strict rules and order. Unfortunately, we fail at both. Take “planning gain”, a key feature of the British system. In the UK, if you want to build outside the approved plan, you must put in a reasonable compensatory public good, it could be a whole community park. This is absent in Ghana. This means local governments do not have the opportunity to drive investment in resilient public infrastructure to correct the bad practices of citizens.

2. A Risk-Taking Citizenry Pampered by Convenience

Citizens demand maximum convenience with minimal regulation. Shops at every corner. Unregulated hawking. Refuse dumped openly. Structures built without permits. Why? Because they know enforcement is inconsistent. Many believe if you’re not bold, you’ll be left behind. So, we keep building in waterways and dumping in drains, trusting the rains won’t come hard the next year.

3. A Culture of No Enforcement

Our development control is paralyzed by “big manism” and a “do you know who I am?” culture. Development control exists on paper but is regularly overruled by political or social pressure. In contrast, in the Netherlands, even a small window extension in your own house requires municipal approval. That’s the level of seriousness. In Ghana, we openly disregard rules and expect order to emerge by magic.

Here's how we turn things around:

1. Demolition isn’t the only answer. Use innovation to retrofit flood-prone areas. The water plaza in Rotterdam is an interesting example.

   
   

2. Let’s reintroduce green spaces (buffers along water ways, retention ponds etc) to enable the ground absorb rain instead of sealing every inch with concrete.

   
   

3. Enforce development controls, now! Protect areas that aren’t yet flooding and punish rule-breakers with zero political interference.

   
   

4. Stop indiscriminate dumping into the few available drains, while we invest in appropriate storm drains.

   
   

5. Stop building waterways. This won’t change unless we work together to create a transparent, digitized and smooth land acquisition and development permitting process. The Land Use and Spatial Planning Authority (LUSPA) Act has a 30 day period which is not complied with and the way forward is ensuring that the 30 days (from application receipt to permit issuance) is adhered to. If citizens could get a decision in 30 days (approved or denied) they would be less likely to gamble on illegal construction. This is the standard we should aim for.

Bottom line?

We don’t lack the plans. We don’t lack knowledge. With a little bit (maybe more) discipline, we can start building cities that can survive a storm before the next flood sweeps us all into another round of excuses. Critically, it is important to co-create flood-prevention and resilience interventions with residents and all relevant stakeholders.