CENTRE FOR DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT ( GHANA CITIES MONITOR)

 

                              CENTER FOR DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT (CDD)

THE PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT MEETING ON THE GHANA CITIES MONITOR   PROJECT

Background

The Center for Democratic Development (CDD) is an independent, not-for profit research and advocacy think tank, working to advance democracy, good governance, and inclusive economic growth. Some African cities including Ghana is said to be failing in serving as catalyst for economic and sustainable development growth. Over the past decade till now, some African urban population growth is on the rise and said to be living in crisis. This crisis include; air pollution, disaster, poor housing, overcrowding and health implications, as a consequence of the inability of city authority to provide these services and socio-economic transformation. This was experienced when COVID 19 emerged and there was weak capacity of city authorities to respond to the pandemic like provision of health services in terms of infrastructure driven some citizens out of the city centers to rural communities.

Therefore, the engagement meeting bringing together representatives like Kwame Oduro from Accra Metropolitan Assembly, Ben Ofori- University of Ghana Institute of Sanitation, Mamavi Owusu-Aboagye- Host for JOYFM and other attendees, was held on the 7^th August, 2023 at Fiesta Royale Hotel, to outdoor the Ghana Cities Monitor (GCM). A project initiated by CDD, to measure the ease living in our cities and to provide strong evidence for policy Advocacy of governance and the service delivery in the urban areas. This monitoring was done in Accra Metropolitan Assembly areas (AMA), Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) areas and Tamale Metropolitan (TMA) Assembly areas.

 Objective of the Meeting

·         To give insights about the challenges that are running in our urban spaces

·         To help inform policy decision- makers like the Metropolitan Assemblies, implementers of the service provisions needed by the citizens.

·         To encourage responsibleness and accountability

·         To empower citizens to hold city authorities accountable.

 

Introduction and Remarks from Chairman

Prof. Abdul Gafaru, The Associate Professor of the University of Ghana Business School acknowledged the CDD-Ghana for harnessing the power of evidence-based research, ideas, partnerships to encourage dialogue, inform and influence public policy. Remarkably, CDD-Ghana deserves commendations for the initiation of this project; ‘Ghana Cities Monitor’. The project is important because, cities are expected to play the leading role of social, economic growth and transformation. However, the reverse is the case, calling for strict monitoring and tracking the experiences of people living in urban areas.

Methodology

The methodology includes the tools like questionnaire, procedures used in collecting the data and how the scores for each Metropolitan area in the various cities was computed using formulas. For instance, the score for any metropolitan area is normalized to run on a 0-100 points scale where the 0 is the lowest and 100 is the highest score using the minimum and maximum scores of the sub-components. This was applied for the major components and computed to get the GCM score.

Findings

The findings are the graphical representation of the scores gotten from each Metropolitan Assembly areas in the cities. For instance, the economic infrastructure which comprises transportation, housing, water, electricity and communications, In KMA, the Transportation score was 34.3, AMA 31.5 and TMA 24.4. Whilst Housing scored 49.4, 44.2 and 47.2 in KMA, AMA and TMA respectively. This was done to the other Components as well.

Panel Discussion

The discussion was about participants showing concern of their rights, development and how the GCM data figures have meaning on policies. The conversation involved Mr. Farouk Braimah-Executive Director for people’s Alliance for Human Settlement, Dr. Isaac Kwamena Arthur-Director for Urban Management Studies, and the Moderator Mamavi Owusu-Aboagye.

Contributions from Participants

Kwame Oduro, the Planning Officer for AMA chipped in with suggestions that, from the findings, the researchers should have included the sub-metros districts like the Ablekuma-South. The sub-structures that have been upgraded to the status level in the municipal assemblies like the Ablekuma-West are yet to be upgraded in the sub-metro districts. So, from the findings, researchers were comparing municipalities to a sub-metro district, which makes it unfair, because definitely, performance in the municipality will be higher than in the sub-metros.

Concerning accountability, Ben Ofori from the University of Ghana, said the laws are very clear on that. The law, local government Act 936 L1 2232 talks about national development planning and gives details on how leaders at the district should account by engaging with the community and having general assembly meetings. But the reason for its ineffectiveness is, funding becomes inaccessible making frequency accountability unheard to the public.

Foster Osae Akunor from the Ghana Institute of Architect added that, the findings were only made in the metropolitan areas. But with the project name as Ghana Cities Monitor (GCM), it should have included the entire boundaries of the cities to make the assessments fully covered. Hence, in the next findings, researchers should include those boundaries and see how the inhabitants are living sustainably. For instance, knowing how pedestrians compete with the boarding of commercial vehicles and how some have compiled themselves living in a wooden- structures like ‘kiosks’ and the planning issues as to what extent will the research effectiveness have on future generations.

The Executive Secretary from Coalitions of NGOs in Health, Edward Owusu contributed to the various graphical representations on the findings as, every finding serves as decision support tools for duty bearers. This comes with budget and resource allocation, so concerning the graphical representations like the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly which was leading in water score of 74.3, Accra Metropolitan Assembly 67.6 and Tamale Metropolitan Assembly 53.5 suggests that, when resources are been allocated to improve developments, TMA will receive more of these resources in terms of funds meanwhile, there may be other conforming defects in the other assembly areas. Also, a lame person will generalize the whole thing that, the one with the higher score needs higher service provisions. Thus, the next finding should include the use of ISB PARAMETERS to serve as reference, since one parameter may not be different from the other.

Mavis Asare Donkor from the Ministry of Education also said the research should include client service chatters. So that with this chatter, institutions will be invited either on radio or television stations to define all the services they provide in that particular institution, to ensure mutual agreement and understanding for the citizens. Considering the fact that, some institutions struggle to provide the services they are required of. This should as well come with delivery deadlines. Hence, sensitizing citizens to hold institutions accountable if they fail to provide their client chatter. This will in turn put them on their toes to play their role diligently. For instance, “if a citizen visits the passport office to submit his/her application documents and told to expect it within fourteen days, that citizen should truly receive it within the speculated deadline without delay”, she remarked.

Way Forward

Mohammed Awal from CDD-Ghana commended participants for coming and added that, in ten to fifteen-years, citizens who will fully relocate to the urban centers, there should be enough service provisions to sustain them.