Road infrastructure expansion: Opportunities and challenges

James Ampomah, Accra, Ghana
February March 03, 2024

R oads are vital for the economy of Ghana. Future economic growth depends on a modern roads infrastructure. Farmers rely on them to take their crops to urban markets. Industry leaders from the Association of Ghana Manufacturers told New Economy Ghana that they will re-locate to the regions, create jobs and reduce rural exodus if Ghana has modern roads. In cities and urban areas, roads reduce travel time and improve safety. Ghana’s roads and bridges connect to neighboring countries to facilitate cross-border trades. Sectors such as tourism depend on the state of the roads.

Stock taking

The World Bank reports that Ghana is a top ‟performer on road network”¹. The country is constructing highways, which will connect to feeder and trunk roads. Feeder roads are essential in rural areas. A feeder road is a secondary road that carries traffic to a major road, such as a highway. In Ghana, they feed the trunk roads with traffic from rural areas.

Ghana has both paved and unpaved roads². The trunk road network has over 3,000 bridges. These include 537 major bridges (i.e. bridges of over 12 metres length) and 45 toll stations. But, a growing road network inevitably deteriorates and therefore require maintenance. A 2016-2020 survey found that 51 percent of bridges on the road network have to be rebuilt, while 70 percent need major repair work³. Every fiscal year, Ghana earmarks funds for maintenance work. The country has also received loans from multilateral banks for road construction and maintenance.

Projections

Ghana had 1,952,564 million vehicles (car and trucks) in 2015. In 2022, the Driver Vehicle and Licensing Authority (DVLA) registered 3.2 million cars at the end of 2022⁴. Officials from the of Roads and Highways told New Economy Ghana that that car ownership will treble in the next 20 years.

Ghanaians import second-hand cars from Europe and the United States. But the country has ambitions to become a car manufacturing hub. Since 2016, the country has attracted seven car manufacuters who are currently producing their brands in Ghana. Toyota, Nissan (Japan), Kia (Korea) and Sino truck (China) assemble cars in Ghana. Other brands include Volkswagen (Germany) and Peugeot (France).

The road network needs to double to meet the demand for road transport. Over the next 40 years, the government wants to increase it from 94,203 km⁵ to 285,000 km⁶. The design of roads must also change to include motorway (expressway), high-speed dual carriageways, four-lane roads and two-lane roads. Factors fueling demand are population growth, migration, and trade.

Financing infrastructure

Ghana relies on borrowing to finance the development of the road infrastructure. This financing model increases public debt⁷. In this predicament, Ghana is not alone in Sub-Saharan Africa. The country is considering alternative and innovative financing techniques. One example is the public-private-partnership or PPP, which reduces both cost and risk. The second challenge comes from to environmental and climate change issues. Road constructions leave an irreversible impact on the environment. They destroy agricultural land, displace communities and cause damage to the ecosystem. More cars on the roads of Ghana mean more carbon emission. Authorities have drafted policies and guidelines to foster the construction of climate-resilient roads.

During the colonial period, roads, and rails sent natural resources from the hinterland to the ports. This legacy also infiltrated air transport. Air transport continues to serve international transport, providing little connectivity with the regions. The ministry of transportation is candid about this situation. In 2020, the transport authorities acknowledged the persistence of ‟poor interface between road, rail, air, and port traffic”. These inadequacies ‟create significant barriers” to ‟intermodal co-ordination”, according to the ministry⁸.

The Ministry has developped a complementary policy initiative to reverse these past legacies. The National Multimodal Transport Master Plan⁹outlines steps for the construction of inland dry ports and interconnected logistics hubs. The plan also aims to link the rail network, seaports and airports with inland ports and roads. The goal of multimodal transport system is to create connections between economic hubs and also between cities and regions.

A company called LMI Holdings is building Ghana's first modern inland port on the Volta Lake. The Trans-Volta Logistics Network, is a marine transport corridor which will have four inland ports, from the Port of Tema to Burkina Faso. The inland port at the Tema-Mpakadan railway station, will become the the embarkation and disembarkation point of cargo to and from Tema (South) and Debre (North). Importers and exporters will be able to transport containers by rail to Akwamu-Korankye (Eastern region) and then loaded them onto barges to and from the Debre Inland Port.

Work began in Debre in July 2022 for this US$200 million infrastructure, concomittantly with an attached industrial park that will cost US$250 million.

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