Hundreds of millions of dollars in development financing have been committed, multiple government programmes launched, and countless ministerial assurances made. Yet every rainy season, Accra does what Accra has always done: it floods.
Currently, the city’s relationship with standing water is less a crisis and more a tradition; a stubborn, expensive, and occasionally deadly annual ritual that no project framework, donor partnership, or national sanitation day has managed to interrupt with any lasting effect.
The most significant intervention currently underway is the Greater Accra Resilient and Integrated Development project, known as GARID, Ghana’s largest urban resilience programme and a direct response to the June 2015 fire and flood disaster that killed scores of people at a filling station in Accra and forced a reckoning about the structural deficiencies of the city’s drainage and waste management infrastructure.
The World Bank approved an initial US$200 million loan in 2019, with an additional US$150 million approved in 2023 to scale up interventions, bringing the total project budget to US$350 million.
Cumulative disbursement to date stands at US$127.1 million, representing 36.3 percent of the total credit, a figure that reflects both the scale of the ambition and the pace at which complex urban infrastructure programmes move from commitment to concrete.
GARID’s development objective is to improve management of flood risk and solid waste in the Odaw River Basin of the Greater Accra Region and improve access to basic infrastructure and services in targeted flood-prone communities within the Basin, with Phase 1 targeting over 2.5 million residents of low-income areas and aiming to protect more than 138,000 households from direct flood impacts.
The project spans four ministries: Works and Housing, Sanitation and Water Resources, Ministry of Health, and Local Government, covering drainage improvement, solid waste management capacity, flood early warning systems, and participatory urban upgrading in three highly vulnerable communities.
In theory, it is the most comprehensive and well-resourced attempt to address Accra’s flooding problem in the country’s history.
In practice, interim research findings have delivered an uncomfortable verdict.
A study examining GARID’s interim impact using baseline and midline household survey data found no significant intermediate effects on flooding conditions in GARID-targeted neighbourhoods compared to non-GARID neighbourhoods, with the project’s most visible gains to date concentrated in transparency improvements and community engagement rather than measurable flood reduction.
Key works remain incomplete, and the communities the project was designed to protect are still flooding.
GARID is not alone in its underwhelming interim performance.
A parallel initiative, the Greater Accra Sustainable Sanitation and Livelihoods Improvement Project, or GASSLIP, is a US$53.86 million jointly funded programme of the African Development Bank and the Government of Ghana targeting sanitation, waste management, and urban livelihoods in selected communities within the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area.
A joint review mission held at the Ministry of Local Government, Chieftaincy and Religious Affairs on May 26, 2026, recorded genuine milestones: over 5,000 household toilet facilities constructed, benefiting more than 50,000 residents, around 60 institutional Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) facilities serving schools and public institutions, and waste management equipment supplied to beneficiary assemblies.
Minister Ibrahim Ahmed acknowledged the progress and commended the African Development Bank for its continued partnership in improving sanitation and urban livelihoods in Ghana.
At the same time, he acknowledged existing challenges, including delayed payments, land acquisition difficulties, and contractor cash flow constraints, stressing the need for continued collaboration among stakeholders to ensure successful project delivery ahead of the November 2027 completion deadline.
The African Development Bank delegation similarly commended the Ministry’s administrative support but emphasised that securing land for the proposed landfill site remains a key priority for the next phase of implementation.
Then there is the structural problem that no project budget can fully address: the city itself.
Accra’s natural watercourses, rivers, streams, and wetlands have been encroached upon by illegal construction, land reclamation, and rapid urbanisation, while poor planning and unchecked development continue to undermine the city’s drainage systems, contributing to recurring flooding and environmental degradation.
Drainage channels that are cleaned during the dry season are refilled with solid waste before the first significant rains arrive.
Wetlands that should absorb stormwater have been built over by residential and commercial developments that planners permitted, tolerated, or failed to prevent.
Flooding in Accra, one resident concluded, is “no longer a technical issue, it is a cultural and attitudinal failure,” arguing that no infrastructure investment can compensate for a governance environment in which sanitation enforcement is inconsistent and communal responsibility for drainage is effectively absent.
The World Bank, for its part, has maintained a supportive public posture.
World Bank Vice President Lisa Rosen, following a monitoring tour of GARID project sites, described the progress as reflecting “a strong commitment to transparency, accountability, and ethical governance,” while Country Director Robert O’Brien urged the project team to “sustain this momentum and ensure timely completion.”
The institutional encouragement is appropriate.
The honest reading of the data, however, is that a US$350 million programme initiated in 2019 has, at the midpoint of its implementation, yet to demonstrate measurable impact on the flooding conditions it was designed to address.
Analysts tracking Accra’s urban development trajectory have noted that the Odaw River and the Korle and Kpeshie lagoons have become heavily silted and clogged with plastic waste, reducing their capacity to carry stormwater during heavy rains.
Major drainage channels need to be widened, deepened, and maintained on a schedule driven by engineering requirements rather than electoral calendars.
Dredging the Odaw before the rains and allowing it to re-silt during the months that follow is not flood management.
It is a flood postponement.
What Accra needs, and what successive programmes have not yet delivered, is not another project launch.
It is the enforcement of building codes in floodplains, permanent protection of wetlands from commercial encroachment, a waste management system that actually intercepts solid waste before it reaches drainage channels, and the political consistency to maintain those standards across administrations.
The money, as the programme pipeline demonstrates, is available.
The institutional will to use it in ways that produce lasting change, rather than impressive disbursement figures, is the variable that determines whether the next rainy season looks different from all the ones that came before.
