IT should have been a relatively short journey across Accra lasting no more than 30 minutes Instead, getting from UPSA, Madina, to Jamestown was double that as my taxi crawled along in heavy traffic, the open window providing little relief from the soaring morning temperatures while exposing me further to the noise and noxious fumes. Advice: avoid booking an economy Bolt – no aircon.
Occasionally, there was a break in the traffic and the car raced joyously ahead only to be pulled up short a few minutes later, stuck behind a seemingly interminable red light. On the other side of the road, I glimpsed a lengthy hoarding proclaiming President Akufo-Addo’s $400 million pet Cathedral project, currently stalled for lack of funds and mired in controversy. It was enough to give one road rage – and I wasn’t even driving. I was supposed to be meeting someone at the legendary Jamestown Café near to the seafront and although I’d left in good time, it looked like I would be late. ‘Don’t worry,’ A said cheerfully, suggesting this was par for the course. My relief at finally reaching my destination was tempered by the fact that I would soon have to go through it all over again to get back home.
The following day I was travelling with two family members to the Tarkwa area 300 kms away in the west of the country, an estimated six to seven-hour journey. Of course, we faced the usual headache of getting out of Accra with a particularly lengthy gridlock at Kasoa Junction. However, soon we were out on the open road, a pretty good one at that almost all the way to Cape Coast, enjoying alluring glimpses of the Atlantic as we motored along at a decent pace.
At Daboase, we embarked on the final 90km or so run to our destination, Oppong Valley, a village tucked away in the rolling hills of Western Region, where much of Ghana’s gold and manganese is mined. However, the sorry state of the roads suggested that we were in the middle of nowhere, not in the country’s mining heartland. Those that met the description of being a road were mostly pitted with pot holes. The rest had degenerated into dirt tracks that had been made worse by the recent rains. The irony was, we had chosen this route because we’d been warned that the more conventional way was ‘very bad’.
In these conditions, you do not really drive your car but manoeuvre it around craters and mud mounds, veering erratically from one side of the road to the other like a drunkard. An articulated lorry carrying a heavy load of timber was unable to right itself after one of its back wheels became stuck in deep mud, throwing it into a perilously lopsided angle. Having been told by the crew that help was on its way, we sweated patiently behind it for more than an hour. When it became clear that there would be no speedy rescue mission, we took our chances and slowly squeezed past the lorry in the narrow gap that remained, scratching the side of our four-wheel drive against a concrete road post in the process. ‘The alternative is that we might have been stuck behind it all day,’ said P, glad to be on his way again.
After arriving at Ateku, the road narrowed considerably, taking us through dense forest where the canopy created a perpetual twilight. The track, for that is what it was, went on and on, with no sign of human habitation, just us and the bush. Suddenly it was dark and we only had car headlights to negotiate the muddy ditches and puddles we kept hitting along the way. Finally, after 10 hours on the road, we reached Oppong Valley, the car splattered with mud and red dust, and the rear bumper hanging loose. ‘Look at that, you travel in Ghana and your vehicle gets buggered,’ said P with a sigh, happy nevertheless to have finally made it.
This is the everyday story of travel hell in Ghana, where the main way for passengers and freight to be transported is via four wheels on a road network that cannot cope with increasing volumes of traffic. Aside from loss of productivity, dead time and raised blood pressure, Ghanaians face increased air pollution and road traffic accidents. Yet there is little that they can do about it beyond voting out one government only to experience more of the same with the next. It is true, I did see a few ongoing road construction projects in Accra. These help, but in the absence of any railway they just attract more vehicles on to the roads, spreading congestion, not to mention adding to the city sprawl.
The colonial railway network, first built at the end of the 19th century to transport gold from mining towns like Tarkwa and extending to 1,000 kms at independence in 1957, has fallen into spectacular decline over the decades, thanks in part to the dead hand of IMF-imposed privatisation culture. The impact on the economy has clearly been negative, that’s why successive governments have made reviving the railways a priority. Unfortunately, there is little to show for all the big talk and investment
The on-off 24km rail service between Accra and the port city of Tema was re-launched in 2020 but has failed to deliver, only running twice a day, I was told, in the morning and evening. ‘Nobody relies on it,’ declared P dismissively. In 2019, the government paid $2 million to a South African consortium to kickstart the Accra Sky Train Project, a 194km, above-ground commuter network aimed at transporting 400,000 passengers a year within the Greater Accra region, only to abandon the scheme two years later. A similar tale can be told about the construction of other key railway projects over the years and, while something might be happening in the background, ‘catching a train’ is not a phrase I am familiar with in Ghana.
Whatever master road and rail plans the government and opposition parties might have up their sleeve in this, an election, year, for now people and haulage firms are condemned to the purgatory of being stuck in traffic or marooned on poorly maintained highways, whether it is in HGVs, four wheeled drives, rickety tro-tros (mini buses) or taxis. This is in a country that in 1966 was able to construct the Akosombo Dam, game-changing infrastructure that continues to supply most of the country’s electricity. Whether its current predicament is due to lack of vision, mismanagement or corruption, Ghana is going fast on the road to nowhere.