Accra’s Congestion Problems Will Worsen If National Investment Concentration Continues

Decongesting Accra stand to be an all-time impossible task unless the national government intervenes to disperse the city's population to other parts of the country by deliberately deconcentrating national investment presently overly concentrated in the city.

Over the years, the talks of decongesting Accra, Ghana's national capital have taken so much talk and action in direct and straightforward manners all of the same and similar fashion. Talks of the traffic on the road, the indiscriminate selling on the rod sides, the choked drains, the haphazard arrangement and positioning of buildings are nothing new to hear; but the daily and routine actions of pulling down buildings on waterways and forcefully removing retail shop owners in a way to decongest the city that represents the country as its capital city have remained the only ritual.

The big question that one can ask is whether nothing else can be done different to decongest the capital city of the country since the now conventional measures have often failed to live beyond a shopping day.

The recent flood situation in the capital along with previous disasters including seemingly unrelated ones as the collapse of huge buildings and the very nuisance of the traffic situation in the city are not befitting of the prestige that the capital of the nation ought to enjoy.

According to city officials, the causes of the floods have been the damping of solid waste in drainage channels and location of buildings on waterways. Much is also often said of the traffic situation as having resulted from the activities of hawkers.

As a result, the focus of city authorities has been of demolishing illegal structures on waterways and forcefully removing hawkers from the road and its sides. These have been wrongly premised, and resulted in an unfair and indecent treatment of the Ghanaian people. The tears, the yelling, the curses, the loss of property and a lot more have been unworthy for several reasons.

First of all, the Accra Metropolitan Authority has not got what it takes in resources and capacity to make sure that the city is decongested. What is required is a national policy by successive governments to disperse, decentralize and deconcentrate national investment.

The reason is that, the congestion in Accra is due to migration of different groups of people from the countryside into the city for various purposes. According to Professor George Owusu of the Centre for Migration Studies of the University of Ghana, over 80% of national investment has been concentrated in Accra alone since 2008.

What this means is that, the resultant infrastructure, services and a whole lot of other investments from this concentration will form the congruent of factors pulling migrants from the edge to the centre since it is more logical to think that such concentration of investment in the capital will naturally result in a deprivation of the other sections of the country. For Professor George Owusu, it must be expected that more of the slums in the capital will be seen in the coming years if the current trends continue.

With the concentration of crucial services in the capital, a lot of the population has been attracted resulting in the creation of much needed market for further concentration of private business activity. In this regard, with such a location identified as a perfect ground for the access of services such as education and employment as well as for the establishment of business activities, the demand for accommodation becomes inevitable. This then form the basic grounding for the variety of buildings and their location and arrangement with direct consideration of the demand and supply determining the place of abode. In simple terms, Accra has developed too many flowers, and segmenting the bees seems an impossible task for any city administrator.

Secondly, realizing that there ought to be a deconcentration of national investment, it becomes reasonable to identify that other parts of the country should be given reasonable attention in terms of the allocation of national investment. The reason why it is important and has become the case where investments are overly concentrated in Accra has been because of the demands of the high population. What it takes to move this population out of Accra will be to create the conditions that pull people into Accra in the outskirts of the country.

In our efforts to decongest the national capital, there has to be deliberate efforts by the national government to provide some of the best educational infrastructure, health facilities, recreation facilities and better conditions for the establishment of businesses such as better road and communication networks, accessible sources of power amongst others in the other parts of the country.

This must be done not only in our view to decongest the national capital, but in our view that such other parts are essential, bonafide and important parts of our country. Lest we forget, many will prefer the nuisance of the capital city to a place where the only available schools are ones under trees; healthcare centres are kilometers across rivers and streams; and markets can only be accessed through footpaths o roads that are rugged, muddy, bushy or even cut through by water channels. So the case of congestion in Accra is more than clear to understand.

In this regard, it must not be forgotten that allocating some of the best human resources to these other parts of our country is also important since that is one other factor determining the decision of people to migrate to settle in different parts of the country.

It is understandable that government constantly comes under pressure to invest in Accra to contain the overwhelming demands of the large population; but even though taking attention away from Accra to other parts of the country may take time to get the needed result, it is the best way to stop piling the numbers on the city. After all, it is no secret that most people in Accra will jump at the opportunity of settling outside Accra if they can still get to enjoy the conditions available to them in Accra.

Finally, it is easy to talk of not overly concentrating investments in the national capital and dispersing such investments to other areas; but there ought to be a comprehensive national framework to guide the allocation of national investment in order to facilitate decongestion of the capital as well as preventing other cities from becoming congested.

In fact, insights from the Ghana Living Standards Surveys have shown clear geographical disparities in the allocation of investments. This has resulted in a deprivation of certain parts of the country especially the three northern regions. Therefore, in our efforts to avoid inequality in the geographical allocation of investment in terms of economic infrastructure and social services, the need for a comprehensive long term framework for the allocation of investment is more than expected. If this is done, then the danger of creating many other cities like Accra will be averted.

It is difficult to think of people beginning to move out of Accra due to better conditions created in other parts of the country. But we must not forget that Accra is a cosmopolitan city in which the natives have now been outnumbered by people from all walks of Ghana and beyond who only travel to seek better conditions of living, better services and exploit a booming market population.

In conclusion, the Mayor together with the Accra Metropolitan Assembly do have a responsibility to administer the city of Accra; but to ensure that the city is not overly congested to present continuous problems of poor drains, floods, slow traffic and poor building arrangements, the city authorities can do little compared to the power of the state represented in the national government to move people out of the city.

This need for investment deconcentration to move people out of the capital city is premised on the concrete geographic fact that the land area of Accra is fixed whereas the population is unlimitedly increasing.

This means that we cannot develop our way out of the problem by continuing to provide physical infrastructure in the form of drainage facilities, or even demolish our way out of it by clearing hawkers off our roads and buildings off our waterways because when people gather, they must be contained in houses and engaged in economic activities.

However, choosing to concentrate investments on other parts of the country with the view of dispersing the high population congesting the city of Accra and other potential areas such as Kumasi will not take a short time to realize but a much longer time. This is thus a long term approach aimed at realigning the development disparities between Accra and the other parts of the country to prevent the escalation of congestion and its attendant challenges in the future.

Accra, the national capital of our country need not be a centre of unreasonable distraction and discomfort; or even a boiling centre of retail economic activity and first choice residence of every person; but a symbolic centre of the state of Ghana where only administrative functions of national character are executed with the pace, comfort and expedience befitting of a national capital.

By David Azuliya

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