The World Bank says fiscal controls imposed by Ghana’s Finance Ministry stalled a 350 million dollar flood prevention project in Accra, weeks before floods killed at least 12 people.
In its latest implementation update, released in May 2026, the Bank downgraded the Greater Accra Resilient and Integrated Development (GARID) Project to “Moderately Unsatisfactory,” despite the programme remaining fully financed. The report attributed the slowdown to fiscal measures the Finance Ministry introduced during 2025, which the Bank said choked off cash flow even though money was available to spend.
GARID funds flood risk infrastructure, solid waste management and urban upgrading across Greater Accra, covering roughly half a million residents in flood prone communities. The Bank said one part of the system, a flood early warning mechanism, is fully operational and that waste collection in underserved areas has beaten its annual targets. But no public flood warning went out ahead of the June 29 disaster, which Ghana’s National Fire Service confirmed killed at least 12 people in the capital, raising questions about what the warning system actually did that day.
According to the report, the Finance Ministry placed a ceiling on project disbursements and temporarily withdrew 13.8 million cedis from the project’s account during 2025, leaving contractors unpaid and civil works delayed. Only 137 million dollars, about 40 percent of the total financing, had reached the project by April 14, 2026. The Bank said disbursements were effectively frozen for roughly 16 months, from November 2024 to March 2026, before resuming this spring.
Government has since taken some corrective steps, returning the swept funds in March and processing a 10.5 million dollar withdrawal in February, its first since November 2023. The Bank said those moves helped but did not solve the underlying problem. “These actions have partially eased liquidity constraints,” the report said, adding that the financing gap affecting the works still remains. Project coordinators estimate they need 40.8 million dollars this year, but the Finance Ministry has allocated only 17.5 million, while a separate 79.8 million dollar contract authorisation request from the Ministry of Works and Housing remains stuck awaiting approval.
The squeeze on GARID fits a wider pattern. The government froze disbursements across several World Bank funded programmes last year, including projects tracking learning outcomes and youth jobs, arguing the pause was necessary to protect Ghana’s debt targets under its International Monetary Fund arrangement. IMANI Africa head Franklin Cudjoe defended the approach at the time as fiscal prudence rather than a rejection of the projects themselves.
The contrast became sharper after the June 29 floods. Interior Minister Mohammed Muntaka Mubarak told Parliament the storm displaced nearly 39,000 people across Greater Accra and killed 18 more people in the Central Region over the following weeks, on top of a month of rainfall that broke Ghana’s historical record. President John Mahama authorised the release of 300 million cedis from the contingency fund for emergency relief and longer term flood mitigation, an amount approved within days of the disaster, after the flood specific project designed to prevent it had gone without meaningful funding for more than a year.
