As a country, we are either failing to plan effectively and appropriately in anticipating the growth of settlements along our highways, re-routing our highways therefrom, and stopping settlements from moving closer to new routes so constructed.
It could also mean that we are seriously constrained by resources from doing the rightful, needful thing of minimizing human-vehicular conflict, dense habitation and activity around highways in particular and roads in general, and intensive land use that only exacerbates the broader environmental ramifications.
Road networks
Long ago, the only road from Accra to Cape Coast traversed through Kasoa (Odukpon Kpehe), Bawjiase, Kwanyako, Agona Swedru, Besease, Ajumako, to Mankesim. Can anyone imagine what confusion would have been occurring in Agona Swedru today if the more coastal road through Winneba Junction hadn’t been built?
To what extent can traffic improvement be made to the Kasoa intersection? Shouldn’t the cost of whatever improvements are being done have gone into a complete bypass?
Yes, we could build a stilted high road through the Weija-Kasoa section of the highway so traffic is not disrupted when there are floods, but can the wider environmental challenge, i.e., erosion, posed by human habitation and activity on and around “Asamoah-Gyan’s Hill”, be ignored? If 95 tipper trucks of sand were weaned a few years ago following similar flooding, can anyone fail to see the disaster waiting to happen?
The mudslides in Freetown, Sierra Leone, a few years back come to mind. That section of the highway never used to have problems in the past, so the question is, what is happening? Where is all the water, sand and mud coming from?
Under our very eyes, all our highways are becoming town roads, and we are doing nothing. Which are our highways now, Accra to Aflao, Accra to Cape Coast, or Accra to Kumasi? None! Our Motorway and N1 at best can be described as cynical jokes. See the number of people knocked on the N1 daily. What are our planners, hydrologists, geologists, geographers, environmentalists, etc., doing?
Accra floods
Accra is a low-lying place with many areas below sea level. If the hydrological implications of Accra’s topology are not given a prime place in its development planning, no amount of storm drains constructed would work.
Where would those drains deliver the deluge of water largely engendered by our land use practices? The flow to the sea is constrained by the low gradient of the land, and during coastal storms, the sea itself is driven to flow inland. So, where would the floodwaters go but to sit on the land and wait its time to seep into the ground, evaporate, and drain into the sea eventually?
The divine engineer, the Almighty God, provided Accra with many retention ponds, by way of wetlands to “absorb” the water overflow when it rains, but in our “greater wisdom,” we have developed them all, leaving very limited space for rainwater to flow, settle, evaporate, seep into the ground, etc. Who doesn’t remember all that expanse of wetland stretching from Mallam Junction, behind the once iconic Ghihoc Brick & Tile factory, to the sea?
Planning decision
I believe one major planning decision that needs to be taken not too long into the future is the decision to pull the plug on fueling the growth of Accra into a megacity by moving the administrative capital somewhere else in the country.
We wouldn’t be the first to do so. Abuja is recent in mind. Even small Malawi has Blantyre as its commercial centre, Zomba as its legislative centre, and Lilongwe as the administrative and national capital. So, it can be done. But in the interim, the need for our development planning to be holistic is evident to see that the challenge of flooding in Accra is beyond just drain construction and desilting to one encompassing topology, hydrology, habitation, land use, and environmental degradation.
The solution is not only about civil engineering. It goes far beyond, for the sake of emphasis. There are many examples of cities that live with the same challenges that Accra faces, i.e., its topology of being low-lying and relatively level to the sea, and are coping well. The Louisiana’s, Galveston’s, Houston’s in the US, Amsterdam’s, etc., come to mind.
So, the question is, why aren’t we learning and taking a cue from others, but rather failing to draw salutary lessons from them? We largely behave like the vulture, and express misery when the floods are upon us, but quickly return to business as usual at the first relief.
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