When the Roads to Knowledge Become Rivers: Three KNUST Access Routes Submerged as Flooding Exposes a Deeper Urban Failure

Heavy rains have once again turned parts of Kumasi into a floating landscape of disruption this time striking at the heart of Ghana’s premier science and technology university, the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (Kumasi). Three major access routes leading into and within the KNUST enclave have reportedly been submerged, leaving students stranded, traffic immobilized, and academic life temporarily disrupted.

But beyond the visible chaos lies a more uncomfortable truth: this is not just a flood it is a recurring system failure.

The Submerged Routes: More Than Just Water on Asphalt

Reports indicate that heavy rainfall overwhelmed drainage systems, causing flooding along key access corridors connecting KNUST’s internal and external road network. Areas around major academic and residential movement corridors commonly used by students, staff, and service vehicles became impassable as water levels rose rapidly.

This is not an isolated incident. Studies on Kumasi’s flood vulnerability consistently identify KNUST and surrounding sub-metros as high-risk zones due to low elevation, poor drainage gradients, and rapid urban expansion .

So the question is no longer “Why did it flood?”

It is: Why do we still act surprised when it floods again?

A City Designed Without Water in Mind
Kumasi’s flood risk profile has been documented extensively. Hydrological analyses show that areas with low slope, proximity to river channels, and poor runoff management are the most vulnerable. Many of these conditions exist around KNUST’s surrounding infrastructure network.

Research indicates that over 30% of Kumasi lies in high to very high flood-risk zones, with significant portions of infrastructure sitting directly in natural drainage paths .

Yet urban development continues to expand into these fragile ecological corridors.

So another uncomfortable question emerges:

Are we building cities for people or building cities against water?

The Real Crisis Is Not the Rain
Rainfall is natural. Flooding in Kumasi, however, is increasingly man-made.

Blocked drains, encroached waterways, unplanned settlements, and weak enforcement of urban planning regulations all compound the crisis. KNUST itself sits within a broader catchment system that channels runoff from surrounding elevated zones into lower basins meaning when rainfall peaks, the university effectively becomes a drainage sink.

A KNUST-based environmental assessment has previously warned that flooding in Kumasi is driven by a combination of:

rapid urbanisation
inadequate drainage systems
river overflow and runoff concentration
weak land-use control
Yet year after year, mitigation appears reactive rather than preventive.

Critical Questions Nobody Is Asking
Beyond the immediate inconvenience, the KNUST flooding raises deeper systemic questions:

1. Why are major academic infrastructure zones still in flood-prone catchments?

If risk mapping has long identified these areas, why has relocation, redesign, or reinforcement not followed?

2. Who signs off on infrastructure development in known drainage corridors?

Is urban planning being guided by science or by convenience and short-term expansion pressure?

3. Why is every intervention reactive instead of predictive?

Drain clearing after floods is routine but why is pre-flood prevention not institutionalized?

4. Where is the accountability chain breaking?

Is it city authorities, campus planners, contractors, or a lack of integrated governance?

5. Are we normalizing disaster as a seasonal event?

At what point does “rainy season flooding” stop being an excuse and become a governance failure?

When Infrastructure Becomes Illusion
What makes the KNUST flooding especially alarming is not just the water it is the illusion of preparedness. Roads are built, drains are constructed, and expansions are commissioned, yet a single downpour still paralyzes movement.

This suggests a deeper structural issue: infrastructure that exists physically but fails functionally.

In other words, we are not lacking roads we are lacking resilience.

A Pattern We Keep Ignoring
Flood risk mapping of Kumasi shows consistent patterns: southern and north-eastern zones remain highly vulnerable due to elevation and drainage flow dynamics . KNUST and its surrounding urban fabric sit within this broader hydrological reality.

So each flood is not a surprise it is a repetition of an unresolved equation.

Yet society continues to respond as though each incident is new.

Conclusion: Waiting for Water to Teach Us Lessons

The flooding of three KNUST access routes is not just an environmental event it is a governance mirror reflecting long-standing structural weaknesses.

The most troubling reality is not that the roads flooded.

It is that:
the risks were known
the patterns were documented
the warnings existed
…and yet action remains largely reactive.

Until planning moves from reaction to prevention, and from construction to resilience, the question will keep returning every rainy season:

Must we always wait for water to rise before we start thinking?

Because in Kumasi today, the roads to knowledge are still being interrupted by something far more basic than ignorance water that we already knew was coming.

By:
Patrick Belebang Yagsori
+233240292413
patrickbelebang@gmail.com

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