Cleaning Agbogbloshie Is Not Enough. Ghana Must Stop Creating New Mountains of Waste

The sight of heavy equipment moving into Agbogbloshie should give every Ghanaian some relief. For years, the enormous waste heap in the area has represented more than an untidy part of Accra. It has become a reminder of what happens when a city produces waste every day but does not build a system strong enough to manage it. The current evacuation exercise is therefore welcome. But Ghana should resist the temptation to celebrate too early. Clearing a mountain of waste is not the same as solving the problem that created it.

Work on the evacuation began in September, with government saying the accumulated waste is estimated at about one million tonnes and that the exercise should take about ninety days. The waste is being moved to the Adepa Engineered Landfill near Nsawam, while the reclaimed Agbogbloshie land is expected to support an urban renewal project, including an industrial park. These plans are ambitious. Yet the most important question is not what Agbogbloshie will look like after the trucks leave. It is whether Ghana will prevent another Agbogbloshie from appearing somewhere else.

Waste mountains are not created in one dramatic moment. They grow quietly from thousands of daily decisions. A household has nowhere convenient to put rubbish. A trader leaves refuse beside a drain. A collection truck fails to arrive. A business chooses the cheapest disposal option. An assembly lacks the equipment to clear an overflowing point. Plastic packaging is used for a few minutes and remains in the environment for years. When these small failures are repeated across a city, the result eventually becomes a national emergency.

This is why Ghana needs to treat waste management as a permanent public service rather than an occasional cleanup exercise. Residents cannot be expected to dispose of waste properly when collection is unreliable or when approved disposal points are too far away. Every metropolitan and municipal authority should know where waste is generated, how frequently it is collected, where it ends up and which communities are repeatedly underserved. Sanitation must be managed with the same seriousness we expect in water supply, roads and electricity.

Enforcement also matters. Ghana has sanitation laws, but rules that are applied only during special operations do not change behaviour. People who dump refuse into drains, open spaces and waterways should know that there are real consequences. The same standard should apply to businesses and waste contractors. Enforcement must be consistent, visible and fair. A city cannot ask citizens to behave responsibly while allowing commercial operators to escape scrutiny when they dispose of waste carelessly.

At the same time, punishment alone will not keep Ghana clean. Citizens need practical alternatives. More households need reliable bins. Markets need adequate collection points. Communities need predictable pickup schedules. Waste workers need proper equipment. Assemblies need the resources to maintain collection systems after public attention moves elsewhere. A clean city is created by routine systems that work every day, not by emergency operations that attract cameras for a few weeks.

Ghana must also rethink the idea that waste management simply means moving rubbish from one place to another. Sending waste from Agbogbloshie to an engineered landfill is clearly better than leaving it beside homes, markets and waterways. But landfill space is not unlimited. The country has to reduce the amount of material that reaches final disposal sites. Organic waste can be separated and processed. Plastics can be recovered more systematically. Businesses that introduce large quantities of packaging into the market should play a greater role in collecting and recycling it. Informal waste pickers, who already recover valuable materials from our waste stream, should be treated as part of the solution and supported to work more safely.

There is also a public attitude that must change. Too often, sanitation is discussed as though it is solely the responsibility of government. It is not. Government must provide the system and enforce the rules, but citizens determine whether streets, drains and public spaces are treated with respect. Throwing a sachet from a vehicle, dumping household waste at night or leaving rubbish after trading may appear insignificant to one person. Multiplied by millions of people, these actions become the very mountains we later spend public money to remove.

The Agbogbloshie exercise can become an important turning point if Ghana uses it as more than a cleanup. The reclaimed land should remain clean. Collection systems in surrounding communities should be strengthened. Waste flows should be monitored. Recycling businesses should be encouraged. Public education should continue after the excavators disappear. Most importantly, local authorities should be judged not only by how quickly they clear large waste heaps, but by whether they prevent those heaps from forming in the first place.

There is something deeply wasteful about repeatedly paying to remove problems that could have been prevented. Ghana needs roads, schools, hospitals, drainage systems and jobs. Every cedi spent clearing avoidable mountains of rubbish is money that could support another urgent need. Prevention is not glamorous, but it is cheaper, healthier and more sustainable than allowing waste to accumulate until a crisis forces action.

Agbogbloshie should therefore be remembered not simply as a place Ghana finally cleaned, but as the place that changed how the country thinks about waste. Success will not be measured by photographs of an empty site at the end of ninety days. The real success will come years later, when that land remains clean and no new mountain of rubbish has risen in another community. Ghana has started the difficult work of removing yesterday's waste. It must now build the habits, services and accountability that will stop us from creating tomorrow's.

Philipa Serwaa
University of Energy and Natural Resources P.O. Box 214, Sunyani, Bono Region

Email: [email protected]