The World Bank has approved $200 million to fund the Greater Accra Resilient and Integrated Development (GARID) project, which would benefit over 2.5 million people living around the Odaw River Basin in the Greater Accra Region.
The project seeks to provide improved flood risk management, solid waste management and improved access to basic infrastructure and services in targeted communities.
A statement issued by the World Bank on Thursday said its Board of Executive Directors approved the funds on Wednesday, May 29.
The GARID project is expected to bring transformative changes in the GAR, focusing on the Odaw River Basin in the first phase and to be expanded to other priority basins within the region in subsequent phases to support a gradual improvement of integrated flood risk management.
The Odaw River Basin is the focus of the first phase, given its high flood risk, population and business density.
It would indirectly benefit the entire 4.6 million population of the region through improvements in flood warning and response system, and solid waste management capacity improvements.
“Enhancing infrastructure investment is critical to achieving the World Bank’s twin goals of ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity, as well as increasing the resilience of African cities,” the statement quoted Henry Kerali, World Bank Country Director for Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone as saying.
It will also help address climate vulnerability and inequality by focusing investments on poor neighbourhoods in targeted informal settlements, which are at a higher risk of flooding.
The GARID project would directly benefit dense urban settlements and substantial economic activities located downstream of the confluence between the Odaw and the Onyasia streams through the development of upstream flood retention ponds, performance-based dredging in the Odaw River’s main channel and tributaries and rehabilitation of selected drainage channels and bridges.
The residents of Accra, especially flood-prone low-income communities, will greatly benefit from comprehensive infrastructure and service improvements.
“About $3.2 billion worth of economic assets are currently at risk of flooding in the Greater Accra Region. The GARID project brings an integrated, multi-sectoral and long-term approach to mitigate perennial flooding impacts in the region, and will, thus, enable higher economic growth, social inclusion, disaster and climate change preparedness, resilient settlements and environmental sustainability,” said Asmita Tiwari, Senior Urban and Disaster Risk Management Specialist and Task Team Leader for GARID Project.
“It will, thus, contribute directly to Ghana’s vision of an industrialized high-income country, and it’s medium-term National Development Framework.”
