Author(s) : Abdul-Gafaru Abdulai
Affiliated institution : African Cities Research Consortium
Type of publication : Working Paper
Publication date : October 2024
Introduction
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 examines how national and city-level politics, urban systems and particular configurations of actors and practices have shaped the political economy of development in Ghana’s capital city, Accra. It synthesises the key findings of ACRC research in the city, which involved two overarching studies on politics and city systems, in addition to research in the urban development domains of structural transformation; neighbourhood and district economic development; land and connectivity; housing; and informal settlements. While the research participants varied across the different urban development domains, in most cases, key informants included political and bureaucratic elites, officials from various government ministries, departments and agencies, metropolitan and municipal budget and planning officers, city mayors, chiefs/traditional authorities, leadership of community-based interest groups, civil society organisations and donors.
Overall, the evidence shows that in none of these five urban development domains has substantial and sustained progress been made during the past two decades. This results from a combination of various systemic and political challenges, as well as the generally weak enforcement capabilities of state actors in the context of dispersed power among a multiplicity of veto players. Structural transformation of the economy has not occurred to any significant degree; the limited structural changes that have occurred merely involve the movement of labour from the low-productivity agricultural sector to other equally low-productive activities in non-tradable services and manufacturing. Rapid urbanisation has not led to a vibrant manufacturing economy, while employment opportunities become increasingly concentrated in services-oriented activities. This makes Accra a “consumption city”. Despite implementation of several land administration reforms since the 1990s, land tenure security remains hugely problematic, and the sale of the same parcel of land to multiple buyers remains widespread. Land regulations remain weakly enforced, explaining why the services of “landguards” remain widely patronised, even as the Lands Act of 2020 prohibits the phenomenon of “landguardism”. The weak enforcement capabilities of state actors are also manifest in the exploitative tendencies of powerful market queens and their adverse implications for the operations of household microenterprises in the city.
Informal settlements have continued to proliferate in the city, with an estimated 38.4% of the population residing in informal settlements. Meanwhile, progress on informal settlement upgrading has been both slow and patchy, often limited to small pilot projects championed by donors. Accra’s housing deficits remain substantial, in part because of the discontinuities that characterise urban housing projects in the city. Motivated in part by the rentseeking opportunities associated with new infrastructure projects, successive governments have often abandoned the urban housing projects started by their predecessors, preferring instead to start their own housing projects which they rarely complete before losing political power. Housing policy failures over the years have led to private-dominated formal and informal housing developments that have largely excluded the city’s low-income residents. There is an undersupply of rental accommodation in the city’s low-income neighbourhoods, providing an opportunity for most landlords to impose exorbitant charges on rental accommodation. The city’s rental system of housing is characterised by informal rental agents, who, in discharging their duties of assisting renters to get vacant homes, add their own percentage to the amount charged by landlords, making the rental costs even higher. While the Rent Act is clear that tenants are to pay for rent on a monthly basis, poor enforcement allows house owners to exploit those on low incomes by requiring them to pay excessive (usually covering two to three years) advance for rental accommodation. Government recently (2023) launched a National Rental Assistance Scheme (NRAS) with the objective of addressing some of the challenges associated with rental accommodation. However, this scheme is only available to people with regular income, and qualification for support includes completion of online forms and proof of employment. Given that most low-income urban households often earn a living in the informal employment sector, where income streams are typically irregular, the NRAS is unlikely to address their plight and thus carries the risk of further exacerbating existing inequalities in access to housing in the city.
Many of 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 and the capture of illicit rents (mostly via procurement-related corruption) for funding election campaigns of the party in power. The rentseeking opportunities associated with the current appointment system mean that once any political party loses presidential elections, all mayors appointed by that party are replaced with appointees perceived to be more politically loyal to the incoming regime. Given the frequent political transitions that occur in Ghana, and the fact that every transition results in leadership changes at the city level, the implications for long-term planning and policy implementation at the city level are obvious. Partly because of the generally limited nature of fiscal decentralisation, city authorities lack both the capacity and autonomy to mobilise and utilise resources in ways that best respond to local priorities.
Many of 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 and the capture of illicit rents (mostly via procurement-related corruption) for funding election campaigns of the party in power
Meanwhile, city governance is fragmented among 25 autonomous local government areas (LGAs) that continue to operate in silos; inter-municipal cooperation among them is sometimes undermined by competition for revenue collection and disputes over administrative boundaries. Such institutional fragmentations and power dispersion make city-wide coordination efforts arduous, especially given the absence of an effective centralised authority with responsibility for city-wide development. The Greater Accra Regional Coordinating Council, which is required to advise the city’s LGAs to work in a coordinated and collaborative manner, lacks both the resources and power to oblige the various autonomous city authorities to do so. Consequently, coordination among Accra’s municipal authorities is weak, adversely affecting the delivery of essential urban services that cut across municipal boundaries.
This report’s analysis suggests that there are no easy solutions to Accra’s socioeconomic development challenges. Here, the highly contested nature of elections means that national governments remain more preoccupied with their short-term political survival. Planning mechanisms tend to respond more to national rather than local-level priorities, not least as city mayors and a significant number of city council members remain presidential appointees. However, the closely fought nature of elections also provides some opportunities for claim making and in the reform space around city governance more broadly. Given the “kingmaker” status of Accra in national elections, election years have proven to be important windows of opportunity for reforms. Concerns about the welfare of low-income urban residents in general, and residents of informal settlements in particular, appear to be gaining increasing attention in political debates and national policy discourses. Political elites are increasingly viewing such neighbourhoods as a key source of political support and as avenues for recruiting youthful populations to work as party footsoldiers.
Nevertheless, this report concludes that many of Accra’s development challenges cannot be successfully addressed without effective citizen mobilisation. There are currently no visible reform coalitions across most city systems and urban development domains, including in areas like urban transportation, which has well organised unions of informal operators. The key policy challenge therefore lies in the question of how best to nurture and sustain reform-minded multistakeholder coalitions around the city’s most critical development challenges. This is one area where external actors can provide some support, not only in terms of helping to nurture and strengthen formal reform coalitions, but also in exploring to identify where coalitional efforts may be going on informally and then providing the needed technical support. In the absence of reform coalitions, the generally short-term orientation of policy implementation will continue to stymie the effective provisioning of public goods in the city. Effective reform coalitions might help build consensus among different powerful urban actors and ensure the continuity of reforms across different political regimes.
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