Ghana drafts Inner City Big Push to retrofit deprived neighbourhoods with homeowners sharing costs
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Local Government Minister Mahama Ayariga says the Inner City Big Push will map and upgrade deprived urban districts in Accra, Kumasi and Sekondi-Takoradi, with government and homeowners sharing the infrastructure bill.
Ghana's Ministry of Local Government, Chieftaincy and Religious Affairs is developing a partnership model with homeowners to retrofit deprived urban neighbourhoods with paved roads, drainage and green spaces, under a programme it calls the Inner City Big Push.
Minister Mahama Ayariga outlined the plan during a visit to Regimanuel Estate in Accra, where he was accompanied by a technical team studying the estate's development model for replication. He said the initiative would initially target high-density zones in Greater Accra, Greater Kumasi and Sekondi-Takoradi, which together house between 60 and 70 percent of Ghana's population.
Under the design, districts would be divided into compartments of about 200 homes, with planners and hydrologists designing road networks, covered side drains, green buffer zones and tree alignments. The ministry's technical team intends to use high-resolution drone imagery and vehicle-mounted LiDAR sensors to map existing neighbourhoods and identify road and drainage gaps.
Ayariga said government and homeowners would share the cost of the works, with incentives to reduce the burden on residents. "If you contribute GH¢100,000 to fix the infrastructure in your neighbourhood, your property value could jump from GH¢10 million to GH¢12 million or GH¢15 million overnight," he said, describing the homeowner as the ultimate beneficiary.
The visit follows the ministry's recently launched Green and Clean Cities Initiative. Ayariga said the technical team, comprising architects, quantity surveyors, urban planners, civil engineers and IT specialists, had critiqued the blueprints with metropolitan, municipal and district chief executives and Urban Roads officials, and was preparing a presentation for President John Dramani Mahama. Regimanuel Gray Limited, the indigenous developer whose gated estates the team studied, is known for incorporating more than 17,000 planted trees and 24-hour gated security.