£43M Loan, Zero Crossings: The Scandal of Ghana’s Abandoned Prefabricated Bridges

In 2020, Parliament approved a massive £43 million loan intended to solve a literal matter of life and death: the isolation of rural communities cut off by treacherous rivers and streams. Six years later, an investigation by The Fourth Estate has exposed a heartbreaking reality. While structural components capable of building at least 25 critical bridges sit rusting away in government storage yards, Ghanaian school children, farmers, and traders continue to risk their lives crossing broken wooden planks and turbulent waters. This is more than an administrative delay; it is an indictment on our national culture of project abandonment, an assault on public sector accountability, and a direct threat to the lives of our citizens. As a nation, we must demand answers: why is infrastructure bought with public debt left to rot while Ghanaians drown?

The Stark Reality of the Prefabricated Bridge Project

• The Scope: A £43 million loan was fully approved to procure 89 prefabricated steel bridges nationwide.
• The Reality: Only 15 out of the 89 planned bridges have been successfully installed across the country so far.
• The Deficit: Components for 25 bridges sit completely idle, leaving the exact location and physical delivery status of the remaining 49 bridges entirely unaccounted for.

Where the Public Assets are Rotting

Investigative tracking confirmed that millions of pounds worth of taxpayers' steel parts are currently stockpiled at two specific state facilities in the Eastern Region:

Components for roughly 20 full bridges are stacked on the bare ground at the National Road Safety Authority office.

Structural parts for another 5 bridges are sitting unused at the Ghana Highway Authority’s Bridge Management Unit.

The Heavy Human Cost of Official Inaction

While these prefabricated steel structures gather dust, ordinary citizens pay the ultimate price:

In 2024, two residents—including an innocent 7-year-old boy returning from an errand—tragically drowned in the Agyei River after their makeshift wooden walkway washed away. Neberehi

Community members still risk their lives navigating the Offin River, where a boat capsized in 2018, claiming the lives of a local farmer and his son. Asuokaw

Schoolchildren are daily forced to wade through the rapid Ayensu River or walk across dangerously unstable, decaying wooden logs just to access basic education.

Strategic Recommendations & Suggestions

To ensure these public assets serve their intended purpose and to bring an end to this negligence, we propose the following urgent interventions:

• Immediate Comprehensive Inventory: The Ministry of Roads and Highways must instantly deploy an independent engineering team to audit both storage yards, cataloging every component to check for theft, degradation, or missing structural elements.
• Parliamentary Probe into the 49 Missing Bridges: The Parliamentary Select Committee on Roads and Transport must launch a public inquiry to determine whether the remaining 49 bridges were ever manufactured, shipped, or delivered to Ghanaian soil.
• Fast-Track Deployment Framework: Civil engineering experts verify that these prefabricated systems can be erected in 3 to 12 months. The Ghana Highway Authority must immediately publish a definitive rollout timeline prioritizing high-risk zones like Asuokaw, Neberehi, and Owenso.
• Passage of a Project Continuity Law: To prevent incoming administrations from abandoning critical ongoing projects, civil society must lobby for legislation that criminalizes the politically motivated stalling of publicly funded infrastructure.

Ghana cannot continue to borrow millions of pounds to fund vital infrastructure only to allow bureaucratic inertia, institutional silence, or political transitions to stall implementation. Every day these bridge components remain stacked in Koforidua and Kukurantumi is another day a Ghanaian child risks drowning on their way to school. True openness and accountability demand that the Ghana Highway Authority and the Ministry of Roads and Highways break their silence immediately. The state must act now to move this steel out of the storage yards and into the communities where they belong. We call on all citizens, media houses, and civil society organizations to keep the spotlight firmly on this scandal until the final bridge is built. Our lives depend on it.

✍️ Submitted by:
Retired Senior Citizen
For and on behalf of all Senior Citizens of the Republic of Ghana 🇬🇭

Teshie-Nungua
[email protected]