Can Ghana house itself by recycling its own dead capital?

Ghanafuor, President John Dramani Mahama, at the National Conference on Housing Finance on October 7th, did something rare in Ghanaian politics: he looked out of an airplane window and saw an economic policy — metaphorically, perhaps, but practically too.

Flying across this country, he said, the number of unfinished houses is "mind-boggling." He is right. From Amasaman to Kwahu Mpraeso, from Kasoa to Kenyase, we have built a vast, accidental museum of interrupted dreams: two-bedroom shells roofed with hope and abandoned for lack of GH¢40,000 (about $2,500) to finish.

His proposal is disarmingly simple and therefore brilliant: instead of chasing only new estates at Appolonia, let us finish what we have already started. Identify unfinished houses by area, get engineers to do bills of quantities, assess owner incomes, provide targeted top-up financing, and convert their current rent into a rent-to-own mortgage.

Add to that the GH¢3 billion Revolving National Housing Fund, with developers borrowing at 10.4% and workers owning at 8.4% in cedis, not dollars, over 15 to 20 years, and the GH¢1 billion seed from the 2027 budget, and you have the most creative housing thinking we have seen since the Nkrumah-era State Housing Corporation's halcyon days.

This deserves praise. But praise without nation-building is mere sycophancy. Let me add my widow's mite.

There is a second museum of dead capital sitting in our banking system: dormant accounts. Under Act 930 and the Bank of Ghana's dormant account directive, an account with no customer-initiated activity for two years becomes dormant, spends three years in a register, is advertised, and is then swept to the Bank of Ghana. The owner can reclaim principal at any time, without interest.

The Bank of Ghana never publishes the total, but any rural banker will tell you: with 23 banks, 300-plus specialised deposit-taking institutions, and mobile money e-float accounts, the pool is easily GH¢500 million to GH¢1 billion. Much of it, we must be honest, has historically been the quiet piggy bank for opaque handling by some staff: fake reactivations, delayed publications, and "temporary borrowings" that never return.

In August 2025, Finance Minister Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson said government is developing a policy to use unclaimed balances for national development, anchored on protecting ownership, transparency and the public interest. He is borrowing, wisely, from the British model. The United Kingdom's Dormant Assets Act created a £1.7 billion Reclaim Fund that keeps a prudent reserve for the 5 to 10% who ever reclaim, and deploys the rest to social good, including housing.

Ghana should do the same, but with a Ghanaian anti-corruption lock.

1. Shorten the looting window. Move money to the central Reclaim Fund after two years via GHIPSS auto-sweep, not after five years of sitting in a branch. Every extra month in a branch is an invitation.

2. Do not spend the principal. Spend the float. Like the Bank of Ghana's DEMI directive for e-money, invest the unclaimed balances in government securities and use the interest to capitalise the National Housing Fund at zero cost. Principal stays intact, so any owner returning after ten years gets every pesewa.

3. Adopt a 40/60 rule: Keep 40% liquid for reclaims, and lend 60% to the housing revolving fund. Even in a crisis, reclaim risk never exceeds 15% in any mature scheme.

4. And most important, publish. Put the entire unclaimed balances registry on a public portal searchable by Ghana Card and *707#. Sunlight is the best audit. When families can find their late father's account themselves, staff cannot quietly close it.

Link the two dead capitals: use dormant money's interest to finish dormant houses. Create a digital map of every uncompleted house, with GPS, photo, completion stage and bill-of-quantities, open to public scrutiny, with funds paid directly to artisans and suppliers, not to owners, and before-and-after geo-tagged evidence. Let Traditional Councils and Assembly members co-validate the list, not just party executives.

Kwahu West, with its thousands of stalled self-builds, could pilot this linkage of Traditional Council validation and digital mapping.

That way, we are not asking for new taxes to house Ghanaians. We are simply recycling what we have already built and what we have already saved but forgotten.

President Mahama has opened the door to thinking outside the box. Let us walk through it — but wearing transparent shoes with traction. Lots of traction.

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