Across Ghana’s major cities—Accra, Kumasi, and Takoradi—urban flooding has become a grim
seasonal ritual. Each year, monsoon rains turn neighborhoods into waterways of plastic waste
and sewage. Markets are submerged. Children wade to school through tainted floodwater.
Homes are lost. Lives are disrupted. These floods are often attributed to climate change or the
effects of rapid urbanization. But the evidence suggests otherwise: what we are witnessing is
the logical consequence of a centrally administered waste management system that is no longer
functional—and perhaps never was.
Ghana’s waste collection regime has, for nearly two decades, been centralized around a single
private contractor: Zoomlion Ghana Limited, and by extension, the Jospong Group.
Entrenched through long-term sole-sourced contracts, Zoomlion has become the de facto
national sanitation operator. Its contracts, often negotiated at the central level without municipal
oversight or competitive bidding, have remained in place across successive governments.
Meanwhile, public sanitation outcomes continue to deteriorate.
This arrangement is more than a policy misjudgment—it is a structural risk. According to the
Minister for Local Government, the Government of Ghana owed Zoomlion GHS 1.2 billion
(approximately USD 100 million) as of April 2025, even as reports of uncollected waste, cholera
outbreaks, and blocked storm drains dominated public discourse. In the most recent rainy
season, over 60% of Accra’s drainage system was reported blocked by solid waste,
according to NADMO—the National Disaster Management Organisation. These are not isolated
administrative failures. They are the direct outputs of a monopolized, non-responsive waste
governance system.
The problems are not confined to collection inefficiencies. The Youth Employment Agency’s
sanitation contract with Zoomlion, for instance, has come under severe scrutiny. Originally
intended to provide jobs and improve waste collection, it devolved into a scheme where workers
were reportedly paid GHS 250 per month out of a government allocation of GHS 850. The
remaining GHS 600 was retained as “management fees.” Allegations of ghost workers—tens of
thousands on payroll who never worked—were neither effectively denied nor investigated. The
YEA’s current leadership has declined to renew the arrangement, citing it as “exploitative.”
Beyond the fiscal leakage and ethical concerns, the fundamental issue is systemic: Ghana’s
current waste management structure disempowers local government. Metropolitan, Municipal,
and District Assemblies (MMDAs)—which are constitutionally mandated to manage
sanitation—have no real authority over contractor performance, nor do they control the budget
lines associated with service delivery. Contracts are awarded nationally. Payments are
centralized. Accountability, therefore, is diffuse or entirely absent.
This centralized monopoly model, in an urbanizing country of over 33 million people, is both
inefficient and dangerous. Waste management is inherently local: it demands granular
knowledge of neighborhood layouts, behavioral patterns, and informal infrastructure. A single
national contractor cannot adapt to the socio-spatial complexities of hundreds of diverse
communities. And when this system fails—as it routinely does—the results are not just
bureaucratic delays but public health emergencies and urban displacement.
What Ghana urgently needs is a deliberate decentralization of waste collection, anchored in
three key pillars: local authority, competitive contracting, and data-driven performance
management.
First, MMDAs must be granted the legal and financial autonomy to issue and manage
waste contracts, and to hold contractors accountable. This implies revisiting the structure of
the Sanitation and Pollution Levy, which generated nearly GHS 1.93 billion between 2021 and
2024. Those funds should be disbursed directly to assemblies, not locked in multi-year national
contracts.
Second, cities should adopt a zonal service model, where each district is divided into waste
collection zones, competitively tendered to multiple providers—local entrepreneurs,
cooperatives, or regional companies. Payment must be conditional, tied to key performance
indicators: volume of waste collected, coverage rates, frequency of pickup, community
satisfaction, and environmental outcomes.
Third, the system must be digitally monitored, with each MMDA operating a real-time
sanitation dashboard. GPS-enabled fleet tracking, mobile citizen reporting, and public waste
scorecards would create the feedback loop that is currently missing. Transparency, in this
model, is not cosmetic—it becomes structural.
To avoid disruption, large players like Zoomlion may continue to operate—but only within a
competitive, performance-based ecosystem. Their role must be recalibrated, not erased. What
matters is ensuring they are subject to the same standards as any other provider. The era of
automatic renewals and service guarantees, regardless of delivery outcomes, must end.
There are already prototypes of this approach in Ghana. The Ga East Municipal Assembly
experimented with local hauliers, youth cooperatives, and the integration of informal sector
pickers. The results included improved collection rates, lower costs, and reduced illegal
dumping. There is no need to import solutions from abroad. The model exists. It simply needs
scale, support, and political will.
If reform is delayed, the cost will be borne not by contractors or ministries, but by communities.
Every cholera outbreak, every plastic-choked gutter, and every flooded intersection is a price
paid for institutional inertia. In a rapidly urbanizing country vulnerable to climate stressors,
sanitation cannot remain trapped in a monopolized legacy system.
Ghana stands at a policy crossroads. Either we decentralize, build competitive local sanitation
economies, and invest in responsive waste systems—or we continue subsidizing floods,
diseases, and the slow erosion of trust in public service delivery.
Let the next rainfall not be another indictment. Let it be the first test of a new system—local,
accountable, and built to serve.
By Richard Dablah
