Water Management

In the Accra-Tema region, which is the main urbanized area of Ghana and is driving the country's growth, water supply and wastewater disposal have potential for the coming years. In this region, the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWC), which is responsible for urban water supply, is expected to continue to invest in cooperation with foreign donors such as the World Bank, the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the Dutch government, which are already involved in the water sector in Ghana. The GWC, which enjoys a quasi-monopolistic position in the distribution of drinking water, must however improve the management of this activity in terms of collection to eliminate the excessive number of unpaid bills and in terms of quality of the network to reduce line losses, which today are totally underestimated. The Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA) Sanitation and Water Project, financed by the World Bank to the tune of $150 million, is currently helping to improve this sector by rehabilitating the Tema wastewater collection network and its treatment plant, which had been abandoned for several years due to lack of maintenance.

In the real estate sector it is also worth noting that the difficulties in obtaining a connection to the water network, often of an administrative nature, lead developers to develop their own water supply by drilling on site. There are no statistics on the percentage of industrial or real estate projects that manage their water supply internally, and therefore the pressure on the aquifers is not quantified, which represents a general water supply risk for the future.

In addition, Ghana, like all sub-Saharan countries, does not manage to offer running water to all its population and for the most disadvantaged, the only access to drinking water is water in bags. It should be noted that unlike Nigeria, which has over 1,500 one-person water sachet companies in Lagos alone, Ghana has a few large entrepreneurs with capacities of up to 1 million sachets per month. This has helped sustain the business in terms of the quality of the products distributed, but the pollution generated by the abundant plastic bags often left at the point of consumption remains a problem without a permanent solution.

Access to drinking water will certainly be one of the global challenges of the 21st century and, despite Ghana's privileged position in sub-Saharan Africa in terms of water resources, the poorest rural populations are still the forgotten ones in terms of access to drinking water.

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