Seventy Years of Excuses: Ghana's Flood Crisis Is a Choice

The flooding crisis in Ghana is not merely “natural” — it is largely man-made.
A few years ago, I posted a tweet that became one of my highest-performing posts on X, formerly known as Twitter. It read: “The only engineers left in Ghana are sound engineers.”

I posted it because every time flooding strikes, the pattern of events makes me wonder whether we will ever truly learn, and whether we will ever become more proactive in addressing the root causes of this recurring problem. Urban flooding has been a frequent occurrence in Ghana since 1930, and Accra, as the capital city, is no exception in its exposure and vulnerability to flood hazards. A 2022 World Bank report stated that flooding affects around 45,000 Ghanaians every year.

The Ghana Disaster Management and Risk Finance Strategy Framework and Implementation Plan (2025–2030) confirms that disasters already impose a heavy financial burden on the country, with floods costing the economy an estimated average of US$100 million annually. Yet the root causes remain unaddressed, and the catastrophe has become a ritual we are forced to endure every year. Years of political inaction continue to claim lives and destroy property. One flood is a tragedy; recurring floods are a policy failure.

In the June 2015 disaster, over 150 people lost their lives. The damage was estimated at over $100 million, and more than 10,000 people were displaced. That year alone recorded 18 separate flooding incidents. The deaths were not caused by drowning alone — a fuel station built just metres from a floodplain exploded when surrounded by floodwater, making it the single deadliest day in Ghana’s flood history. Media houses provided coverage, journalists reported on the tragedy, yet leaders continued to fold rather than tackle the root causes, while certain citizen behaviours perpetuated the same cycle. The 2015 disaster became the reference point for every subsequent policy conversation — yet policy barely changed.

Every city has an identity. Walk down a street in New York and you sense it immediately. Walk into Cantonments or the Airport Residential Area in Accra, and you sense something different— the building designs, the layout, the planning, the intentionality that shaped those communities. But there are far too many places in this country that people dread during the rainy season. Tragically, most of these places are in the capital city. Some areas have become defined by what happens to them every rainy season. Places like Kaneshie, Pantang, Ashaley Botwe Lakeside, Ashaiman, Sakumono, Kanewu, Adjei Kojo, and parts of Agbogba-Ashongman flood with devastating regularity. The same streets. The same images. The same outrage —which lasts exactly until the water recedes.

When I was young, there was a town council established by ordinance in 1894. Today, its functions have been absorbed under the Local Government Act, 1993 (Act 462). One of its core mandates was to ensure that communities and their environments were kept in good shape. While the work of the town council helped raise a degree of environmental consciousness among Ghanaians, I have watched over the years as the law enforcement aspect of local government has steadily declined in applying the holistic measures needed to address flooding.

There is also the NADMO Act, 2016 (Act 927), which establishes the National Disaster Management Organisation, mandated to coordinate prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery across ministries, local governments, and communities. NADMO also chairs the National Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction. However, it is critical to strengthen the ‘prevention’ aspect of NADMO’s operations by designing comprehensive and proactive programmes. Drain desilting campaigns — such as those conducted with Zoomlion — are a good start. The “No Dumping, No Flooding” waste management drives have been a commendable initiative, and the early warning systems run through the Ghana Meteorological Agency, alongside community training through Disaster Volunteer Groups (DVGs), deserve recognition. These groups must be given greater resources to tackle flooding in a sustained, long-term manner rather than through short-lived interventions.

On the matter of government infrastructure, we must acknowledge that Ghana’s drainage systems are inadequate and frequently clogged. Recently, footage emerged of citizens dumping rubbish into drains during rainfall, expecting the flood water to carry it away. Such indiscipline contributes to the human dimension of this crisis and must be investigated and penalised.

However, that is only one side of the coin. The other side exposes the inadequacy of our national waste management system. How are we investing in recycling, composting, and proper waste disposal infrastructure? The old town council model, which charged environmental levies, offers a useful precedent. If enforcement bodies were properly empowered and adequately resourced, revenue generated from environmental compliance activities could be channelled directly into cleanup operations. In the same way, national cleanup campaigns should be accorded the same seriousness and energy as a national day of prayer. Cleanliness is next to Godliness.

I watched the President of Ghana, His Excellency John Dramani Mahama, state in a news broadcast that the cause of the flooding is not an engineering problem but rather indiscipline. He is right — but that is not the whole truth.

Consider our road networks. The majority are gravel or earth roads, many in deplorable condition — particularly across Accra. When heavy rainfall occurs, most road sections experience drainage failures and flooding precisely because of drainage deficiencies on feeder road networks across the country. The same problem extends to urban roads, many of which are in dire need of maintenance and rehabilitation. Some city roads were constructed with no drainage system at all. It is therefore prudent for the government and the Roads Minister to prioritise road improvements and undertake maintenance activities that include assessing existing drainage capacity, expanding drainage infrastructure, and installing new drainage systems on roads in flood-prone locations. In this era of artificial intelligence, we should also explore how AI can help government institutions map flood-prone areas, forecast flood impacts, and manage flooding more effectively. The One Million Coders initiative could be redirected and focused to train human resources to tackle national challenges like flooding, galamsey, deforestation, and encroachment.

I cannot overlook the enforcement of land-use planning and zoning regulations, which is critical to flood prevention. Unplanned urbanisation and the non-enforcement of zoning regulations have caused significant losses to both individuals and the government. Recently, there were major demolitions of structures built on Ramsar sites across the country.
For those unfamiliar: a Ramsar site is a wetland of international importance designated and protected under the Ramsar Convention to contribute to sustainable development. These areas are unique ecosystems that support significant biodiversity.
Many of the people who built on these protected sites were either granted fake permits or operated under little or no law enforcement oversight for years — until those recent demolitions. Why did it take so long? If land is designated for a specific purpose, it is the government’s responsibility to enforce compliance from the outset. The failure to do so points clearly to weak institutional leadership — leaders who chose personal gain through corruption over leaving a meaningful legacy. Some citizens purchased these plots from individuals, chiefs, or developers who were fully aware the land was a protected site, yet sold it regardless using fraudulent documentation. While buyers must conduct due diligence, it is equally dangerous to overlook poor monitoring and corruption within law enforcement agencies. The broader issue remains: unauthorised development on Ramsar sites contributes directly to flooding.
Unplanned urbanisation must not be tolerated. Our country must operate within a plan — and that plan must be enforced.

Another critical area is housing affordability. Recent data from the Ghana Statistical Service (2025) shows that approximately 30.8% of Ghana’s urban population — around 4.8 million people — live in slums or informal settlements. In Greater Accra, this proportion is even higher, exceeding 50% by some measures, and these areas concentrate poverty and deprivation. According to the Global Centre for Adaptation’s 2021 report, over 1.6 million people in Accra live in flood-prone settlements. This staggering figure highlights the most vulnerable people in our society — those who bear the severest consequences of flooding due to poor infrastructure. This is a central factor in the incessant flooding crisis, because migrants and the economically vulnerable often have no choice but to settle in flood-prone areas. It is also worth noting that slum living is no longer exclusively a low-income issue. Today, people from the middle-income bracket are settling in these areas due to housing unaffordability. Slum settlements will always exist to some degree — Ghana is not alone in facing this challenge. But the question is: how do we prevent these areas from becoming death traps for our citizens? This is where leadership must step up and prioritise the development of adequate infrastructure in these communities. Where settlements fall within flood zones, law enforcement bodies must coordinate the orderly relocation of affected residents.

To my fellow citizens: the quality of any country is determined by the quality of its people. Our leaders are, in many ways, a reflection of all of us. It is time we began putting our country first. Communal labour used to be a routine act of civic pride; today, many wait for the government to act first. We used to report those who polluted the environment; today, many turn a blind eye, waiting for someone else to act. Our leaders are the average of all of us. If every individual took responsibility for their own actions and made decisions with the nation’s interests at heart, Ghana would prosper. Dr Kwame Nkrumah once declared, “Self-Government Now.” Today, our call must be: “Serve Ghana Now.” When we move from expecting to be served to choosing to serve, many of these crises can be averted.

My sincere wish is that serious national issues like this one would not be dressed in the colours of political parties. That the last thing anyone thinks of in a crisis should be whether it is an NPP or NDC issue — and that the first and last thing on everyone’s mind should simply be: Ghana must prosper.

When we adopt the right attitudes, government champions enforcement through sustained funding, and citizens change how they relate to their environment, we create a promising path forward for this nation. We are approaching 70 years as a republic. It is time to rebirth
ourselves — and to put Ghana first.

Tsifodze Ernest is the founder of Nalike Africa and a leadership facilitator whose work sits at the intersection of human potential, organizational growth, and purposeful impact. A published author of three titles — Life Beyond the Ordinary, Minerals for the Mind, and Until I Touch the Sky — he brings both depth and lived experience to every room he enters. He serves as a start- up mentor and board advisor, and holds academic grounding from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (Ghana), Anant National University (India), and Harvard Business School, where he completed a certificate in Power and Influence for Positive Impact.
Email: [email protected]