Ghana’s property developers accepted partial blame for worsening floods on Friday, joining disaster officials and an activist who cited weak enforcement, poor waste habits and building on wetlands.
The unusual round of self-criticism, aired on Asaase Radio’s TownHall Talk, lands as Accra recovers from another bout of deadly flooding and as President John Dramani Mahama recasts a problem he once promised to engineer away. Mahama campaigned in 2024 on an engineering fix for the capital’s floods. Last month in London he called the flooding a matter of indiscipline rather than engineering, and on 9 June he ordered the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) to map blocked waterways and draft long term solutions.
Samuel Amegayibor, executive director of the Ghana Real Estate Developers Association (GREDA), spread the responsibility across the whole system. “The direct answer would be all of us,” he said, pointing to under resourced state agencies, lapses among building industry professionals and routine disregard for planning rules.
He singled out the habit of paving entire compounds, which seals the ground and pushes rainwater into drains that already cannot cope. Even soundly built estates flood, he said, when neighbouring areas manage drainage badly. To close the gaps, Amegayibor proposed handing building inspections to private professionals and tightening accountability in the permit process, arguing that residents will pay for systems they can trust.
NADMO backed the picture of a man made crisis. Alhaji Mohammed Abubakar Tchafaram said recent assessments traced much of the flooding to deliberate construction in waterways and refuse dumped in drains, with people filling wetlands that once worked as natural safety valves. Communities that never flooded before now go under, he said, because those buffers have been built over.
Tchafaram said emergency teams had pulled trapped residents to safety, treated the injured and moved displaced families into churches and mosques. Authorities have flagged illegal structures and begun demolition and dredging to reopen channels, he added, warning the yearly rescue cycle will repeat unless enforcement holds.
Oheneba Kwadwo Safo, the civil engineer who founded the cleanup group BuzStop Boys, put the boldest figure on the table, estimating that roughly 85 percent of the problem comes down to poor waste disposal and choked drains. Clear those drains, he argued, and short bursts of rain would stop swamping neighbourhoods. He linked the mess to a growing every person for themselves attitude and said the floods will deepen without a shift in public behaviour.
The rains, which began in May and have run heavier than usual into June, have submerged homes, displaced families and killed people across Accra and other regions.
