Accra: City report

Working Paper 22

Abdul-Gafaru Abdulai

October 2024

Abstract

Accra is Ghana’s capital and most populous swing voting city and therefore has been a key electoral battle ground for political parties during the past two decades. This report synthesises a set of studies completed by a team of researchers in Accra as part of the African Cities Research Consortium (ACRC). These studies used the ACRC’s holistic framework to examine how national and city-level politics, urban systems, and particular configurations of actors have shaped reform processes and their outcomes in the development domains of structural transformation; neighbourhood and district economic development; land and connectivity; housing; and informal settlements. The report argues that in none of these urban development domains has substantial and sustained progress been recorded during the past two decades, due to a combination of various systemic and political challenges, as well as the generally weak enforcement capabilities of state actors. The city’s development challenges are compounded by the problematic city–national relations, in which incumbent presidents appoint mayors mainly on the basis of party political loyalty, while mayors in turn prioritise the interests of governing national elites through the clientelist distribution of public resources. City governance is fragmented among numerous autonomous local government areas that continue to operate in silos, making it particularly challenging for the effective delivery of essential urban services that cut across municipal boundaries. The report concludes that many of Accra’s development challenges cannot be successfully addressed without effective citizen mobilisation. The key policy challenge therefore lies in the question of how best to nurture and sustain reform-minded multistakeholder coalitions (either formal or informal) around the city’s most critical development challenges. In the absence of reform coalitions, the generally short-term orientation of policy implementation will continue to stymie the development of the city. Effective reform coalitions might help build consensus among different powerful urban actors and ensure the continuity of reforms across different political regimes.

Keywords

Politics, power, political settlements, political economy, clientelism, housing, informal settlements, land reforms, structural transformation, Accra