Accra’s flooding is as much an engineering problem as one of indiscipline, built environment expert Eric Eduam has argued, challenging President John Mahama’s claim that behaviour alone is to blame.
President Mahama told a diaspora town hall in London on Sunday that flooding in the capital stemmed from poor habits, not faulty engineering. “It is just a problem of indiscipline,” he said, blaming plastic waste that blocks drains and building on waterways.
Eduam, an award winning built environment expert, said the truth was not either or but a combination of both. Indiscriminate dumping, building on waterways and encroachment on flood plains all worsen flooding, he agreed. But much of Accra’s drainage was designed decades ago for a smaller, less paved city.
The metropolis now holds more than five million people, he noted, with concrete and asphalt replacing land that once soaked up rain. The same downpour produces far more runoff than it did decades ago, often overwhelming channels that already run beyond their design capacity.
Eduam pointed to undersized drains, incomplete drainage links and a shortage of stormwater storage such as retention ponds and wetlands. Without them, he said, rainwater rushes through the city even where drains are clear.
He framed flooding as the product of three linked factors: drainage capacity, maintenance and human behaviour. Clearing every drain would cut flooding but not end it, he argued, because clean drains cannot expand how much water a system can carry.
While the President’s focus on waste reflects a real problem, Eduam said tackling Accra’s floods would need sustained investment in drainage and planning, not behaviour change alone. The city, he concluded, has outgrown infrastructure built for a different era.
