Unbalanced Investments: Accra’s Informal Settlements

Planning for informal settlements is a challenge in many countries. Informal settlements usually suffer from a lack of basic local services and infrastructure. This paper examines government expenditures in Accra, Ghana, to analyze the extent to which the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) invests in informal settlements. I engage with this topic from three perspectives. First, I review Accra’s urbanization and address how its historical legacies, such as Accra’s first town plan in 1958, have influenced current settlements. I find that little progress has been made because many “focal points” (that is, slums) identified in the 1958 plan remain as locations of present informal settlements. Second, from a fiscal standpoint, I analyze AMA’s budgetary trends from 2013 to 2017 to highlight this local government’s overreliance on the national government for infrastructure investments. Few infrastructure projects in AMA were supported by local government alone and many development projects would not be possible without external funds. Third, I engage with AMA’s unbalanced investments from a governance perspective, in part by exploring the distribution of drainage projects across the city. I notice that the funding for the drainage projects in AMA has not been deployed in the submetros with the most need. This finding also highlights that Ghanaian decentralization policy has not resulted in effective and just urban development, such as balancing citywide drainage development within local jurisdictions. Upon relating these dynamics with Ghana’s decentralization progress, I argue that: (1) Ghana’s arbitrary decision on decentralization does not help alleviate local pressure on informal settlement planning, and that (2) AMA as a local government has overlooked the urgency of balancing local development. I suggest local governments address these issues by enhancing their capacity for just governance and strengthening coalitions with other local governments.