The Disturbing Perennial Accra Floods and the Spatial Planning and Land Use Act: A Call for Responsible Leadership

Each year, as the rains descend on Accra, so too do the devastating images of submerged roads, displaced families, and ruined livelihoods. The perennial flooding in Ghana’s capital is not merely a natural disaster it is a failure of leadership, planning, and enforcement. The root of the crisis lies not in nature’s wrath, but in human negligence, institutional inertia, and the lack of political will to implement and enforce the laws that should protect our cities and citizens.

One such legal framework is the Land Use and Spatial Planning Act, 2016 (Act 925), a comprehensive law passed by the Parliament of Ghana to regulate land use and promote sustainable development. Its primary aim is to ensure that physical development in the country adheres to approved spatial plans. Yet, despite its noble intentions and robust provisions, Act 925 remains largely underutilized and under-enforced particularly in urban centers like Accra where the consequences of neglect are most severe.

The Flood Crisis: A Human-Made Disaster

Accra’s flood challenges stem from three main factors: poor land use planning, weak enforcement of building regulations, and the rampant encroachment on waterways and wetlands. Developers continue to construct buildings in waterways with impunity, aided by corruption, political interference, and bureaucratic complicity. Open drains are choked with plastic waste, unapproved structures mushroom across the city, and green buffer zones are converted into private real estate.

This is not a matter of ignorance; it is a matter of indifference. The laws exist. The knowledge exists. What is missing is leadership.

The Promise of Act 925

The Land Use and Spatial Planning Act, 2016 provides a framework for integrated and sustainable spatial development. It mandates the preparation of national, regional, and district spatial development frameworks, structure plans, and local plans. It empowers planning authorities to prevent unauthorized developments, demolish illegal structures, and sanction defaulters.

Crucially, the Act makes provision for the creation of the Land Use and Spatial Planning Authority (LUSPA) and local planning authorities, which are tasked with ensuring that land development conforms to approved plans. These institutions are not just bureaucratic bodies they are instruments of transformation, if only our leaders would wield them with integrity and courage.

Leaders Must Lead

It is time our political and civic leaders stopped paying lip service to flood control and started taking real action. Leadership in this context means enforcing the law, no matter how politically inconvenient. It means making tough decisions, including the demolition of unauthorized structures even when such actions may upset political supporters or financial benefactors.

Leadership means adequately resourcing LUSPA and the Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies (MMDAs) to enforce spatial plans. It means investing in public education on land use, improving urban drainage systems, and integrating climate change resilience into city planning.

Leadership also means accountability. When a city floods because someone approved a building permit in a waterway, that person must be held responsible. When flood victims suffer because government failed to enforce its own laws, that government must answer to the people.

A National Conversation

The recurring floods in Accra must spark a national conversation about urban planning, sustainable development, and the kind of leadership we demand. Citizens must demand transparency in land allocation and building permit processes. Civil society must hold local assemblies accountable. The media must shine a light on illegal developments and the officials who enable them.

The flooding in Accra is not inevitable. It is a symptom of a broken system that we have the power and the legal tools to fix. The Land Use and Spatial Planning Act is a powerful instrument. What remains is the courage to use it.

Let us be reminded that nature may bring the rain, but it is our failure to plan and to lead that turns the rain into ruin.

Enoch Anhwere Afoakwah is a lawyer an International Relations specialist, Environmentalist and Public Policy Analyst. Enoch writes on constitutional, legal, environmental and governance issues in Ghana.