Ghana's transport crisis rooted in politics, not planning – expert warns

Ghana has no shortage of blueprints for fixing its transport chaos—but successive governments keep abandoning them when they take office, leaving the country trapped in a cycle of congestion and inefficiency. That is the stark assessment from spatial and land use planner Dr Benedict Arkhurst, who argues that the real barrier to progress is not the absence of strategy, but political will.

Speaking on Joy FM's Super Morning Show during Joy Sustainability Month, Dr Arkhurst pointed out that Ghana has invested considerable effort in developing comprehensive transport plans over the past decade, complete with diagnoses of congestion problems and proposed solutions. Yet these carefully researched documents often gather dust when a new administration arrives with its own agenda.

The Plans Exist—So Why Haven't They Worked?

Ghana is not starting from zero. The country has a Transportation Master Plan, a Greater Accra Regional Spatial Development Framework, and a National Spatial Development Framework—all designed to guide transport infrastructure development over the next two decades. These documents represent significant technical work to identify root causes of congestion and chart a path forward.

However, Dr Arkhurst highlighted a fundamental disconnect: when governments change, so do priorities. New administrations interpret their election mandates through their own manifestos, which often diverge from existing long-term strategies. This creates a stop-start pattern that undermines any real progress.

The expert cited a telling example: while Ghana's Big Push initiative emphasises intercity road infrastructure, urban transport and congestion solutions—the day-to-day reality for millions of Ghanaians—receive little attention in government policy. This gap reveals how national priorities can sideline the detailed work of transport planners.

Why This Matters for Ghana

The consequences of this political inconsistency ripple through Ghana's economy and quality of life. Cities like Accra and Kumasi face worsening congestion that eats into productivity, increases travel times for workers, and adds stress to informal transport operators. The failure to implement Bus Rapid Transit systems or modernise the trotro network keeps Ghanaians reliant on outdated, inefficient transport modes.

For commuters, the result is clear: unpredictable journey times, overcrowded vehicles, and high costs. For the economy, chronic congestion drains productivity and inflates logistics costs. For transport workers and operators, the absence of structured reform means continued precarious conditions and limited opportunities for formalisation.

Dr Arkhurst's warning suggests that Ghana does not need more planning—it needs better political commitment to following through on existing plans. This requires creating mechanisms to insulate long-term transport strategy from the churn of electoral politics. Without such commitment, even the best-designed frameworks remain academic exercises.

The Path Forward

The expert's intervention underscores an uncomfortable truth: Ghana's transport gridlock is a governance problem, not a knowledge problem. The country has the plans, the data, and the technical expertise. What it lacks is the political continuity to implement them over the multi-year timeframes that transport infrastructure demands.

For this to change, incoming governments would need to embed existing transport strategies into their own policy frameworks rather than abandoning them. This might mean reviewing existing plans and adapting them to new administrations' vision—but continuing to scrap them entirely when power changes hands is a luxury Ghana's congested cities can no longer afford.