阿克拉：快速而无序的发展

任何一位第一次到加纳共和国首都阿克拉的游客，一定会对科托卡国际机场留下深刻印象。这个刚刚投入使用的第三航站楼的航空设施非常先进，受到游客的赞叹，进而也让他们对加纳，特别是阿克拉充满了期待。

阿克拉是加纳的商业和交通枢纽，每天都吸引着来自全国各地的人们。这里有许多著名的旅游景点，包括克里斯蒂安堡宫、独立拱门、夸梅·恩克鲁玛陵墓等。阿克拉的经济主要依靠金融、商业和工业，其中工业包括食品加工、饮料和纺织品。

持续增长的城市人口

阿克拉作为国家的首都，近年来的人口一直在增长，而且预计未来这一增长趋势仍将继续。

根据2012年的统计，阿克拉的城市人口是227万，城市的占地面积225.7平方公里。大阿克拉大都会区域（GAMA）的人口已达到近400万，总面积也扩大至约900平方公里，使其在非洲大都市的排名中名列第11位。

近年来，女性人口的增长速度比男性人口更快，这可能是由于城市在贸易和服务业提供了更多的工作岗位，从而吸引越来越多的女性前来寻找就业机会。

阿克拉大约56%的人口是年轻人（24岁以下）。男性人口略高于女性，这与全国人口中的男女比例基本持平。

数据显示，在阿克拉，大约45%的居民是从非洲其他国家迁移来的移民。阿克拉有多个低收入人群居住区，城市总人口的58%生活在这样的区域。

居住在阿克拉的主要族群除了当地的加族外，还有阿肯族、加-阿丹格贝族和埃维族。人口中信仰基督教的比例达到83%，10.2%的人口信仰伊斯兰教，另有4.6%的人口没有宗教信仰。

糟糕的公共交通和城市卫生

由于阿克拉一直在持续快速发展，这使得城市的基础设施面临着越来越大的压力。可以想象得到，作为一个每天比其他城市都更吸引人前往的城市，大多数道路都会出现交通拥堵的现象，特别是早晚人们上、下班的高峰时段。

使交通状况变得如此糟糕的现实是，大约95%的通勤者除了依靠公路交通外别无选择。由于公共交通不够发达，很多人只能开私家车上班，另一些人则选择骑摩托车出行，摩托车的安全性较差，市政府一直在想尽办法予以取缔。

另一个让阿克拉市议会（AMA）深感头疼的问题是城市的卫生和废弃物管理不善，仅在阿克拉一地每天就会产生3000吨的垃圾。

由于没有足够的垃圾填埋场和倾倒场，一些非正式的垃圾收集者在任何他们认为合适的地方使用三轮车倾倒垃圾，比如在主干道旁边，这使得这一问题变得更加严重。在有三轮车行驶过的地方发现成堆的垃圾是很极为普遍的现象。

不过一些知名的废弃物管理公司已经为此付出了极大的努力，比如，中联加纳有限公司目前就正在与加纳许多地方政府（地区议会）合作管理废弃物。这家公司与其合作伙伴在阿克拉建立了两个回收和堆肥厂，另一个在加纳第二大城市库马西的工厂也即将完工。

2019年4月5日，阿克拉的第二个工厂（回收和堆肥综合工厂）开始试运行，该公司的创始人约瑟夫·西奥·阿吉蓬先生承诺将在加纳所有其他地区建造类似的工厂。

事实上，由于废弃物管理已经成为加纳面临的严峻挑战，纳纳·阿库福-阿多在就任总统时曾做出承诺，保证在他任期结束前要让阿克拉成为非洲最干净清洁的城市。可因为治理城市垃圾实在不是一件容易的事情，所以总统的这一愿望还远未得到实现。

虽然现状仍不尽如人意，但进展还是明显的。4月5日，在新的卫生设施投入使用时，副总统马罕姆杜·巴武米亚博士指出，正是由于阿库福-阿多总统清除垃圾的承诺和努力，阿克拉大都市固体废弃物的处理已经从16.6%提高到53%，取得了显著的成绩。

阿克拉在发展进程中遇到的另一挑战就是随着居住人口的增长，电力分配出现不足，虽然截至2018年11月，加纳的装机容量已经超过4000兆瓦。由于现有变压器需要超负荷运行，导致一些地方的居民时常会遭遇停电。

⬆高铁列车在北京

城市开发需要专业指导

奥多多·努瓦迪努女士是一位城市发展方面的专家，她在接受采访时告诉记者，她对政府促进城市发展的政策并不了解。她说，“问题是一些措施并非出自专业人士，我认为在这点上国家的做法是不对的。”

努瓦迪努女士认为，无序发展造成了现在的局面，像阿克拉这样的城市在建设过程中听取的是一些游说人士的意见而非专家的建议。

因此她敦促专业人士应当团结一致，在城市开发方面发挥自己的作用。她强调说，“要想办法让政府和人民意识到这是我们的专长，如果我们不在这方面有所作为的话，我们对这个国家就毫无用处可言。”

在她看来，在城市发展的多个领域，外国投资非常有帮助，比如融资、技术和基础设施建设。

努瓦迪努女士建议，在开发和建设城市时一定不要照抄照搬国外的一切，但是可以根据自身条件借鉴国外的一些先进做法。项目开发时不要重复建设，以免造成不必要的浪费。

对于阿克拉未来的发展，来自土地利用和空间规划局（LUSPA）的安东尼·吉梅拉先生认为，需要进行一些法律和体制方面的改革。地区办事处被划归地方政府部门所管辖，是大都市、市政和区议会下属的一个实体规划部门。而土地利用和空间规划局总部和地区办公室需要负责规划的落实。他说，“我们要为各个项目提供资金、制定标准，并给予他们相关的培训。”

他说，可是规划局人手明显不足，只能完成工作量的45%，这使他们在工作中遇到了不少挑战。他指出，未来新城市的开发已经有了一些规划，但它们无法得到落实。

他充满遗憾地说，“我们有那么多很好的规划，但就是不能落实，相关的法律也得不到执行。我们任由人们乱扔垃圾却不采取任何行动，大家为所欲为地沿着水道私搭乱建，所有的空地都被侵占了。”

在谈及外国投资的重要性时，吉梅拉先生说他的一些同事有幸前往国外学习空间规划和物流，他们都感到受益匪浅，而且他们现在已经能够独立设计一些空间规划方案了。

他暗示土地利用和空间规划局很快会拿出一个空间方案，显示阿克拉所有的灾难风险区域，以便提早采取预防措施。他还补充说，“我们会标出这些地区，让投资者有所了解。”

事实上，如果没有外国投资，阿克拉和其他城市的许多开发项目都不可能开工。外国投资不仅指资金资助，也包括提供技术和专业知识。2019年4月10日在北部地区的塔马利，总统阿库福-阿多亲自宣布加纳与中国水利水电建设集团的合作项目一期正式启动。该项目的投资额将达到20亿美元，是加纳与外资合作的最新项目。

除了塔马利的第一座立交桥和10公里的辅助道路外，阿克拉也将从这个总体项目支持协议（MPSA）中获益。因为该协议还包括在阿克拉市中心修建84公里的道路，以及从郊区阿登塔到多多瓦再建一条14公里长的道路，从而缓解交通拥堵，增强道路的安全性和减少出行时间。

英文版

Accra limping along

By Edmund Smith-Asante For China Investment  Reporter of Daily Graphic in Ghana

Any first-time visitor to Accra, the capital of the Republic of Ghana, is bound to be impressed on arriving at the country’s main international airport, Kotoka. The recent opening of a third terminal for the airport, which compares with any of such facilities in the aviation world makes a bold impression on the visitor that Ghana and by extension Accra, is indeed a place of modernity.

 Accra is a business and transportation hub in Ghana that daily attracts people from all parts of the country and it is home to many popular tourist attractions, including the Christiansborg Castle, the Independence Arch, Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum, etc. The city’s economy is reliant upon the finance and commercial sectors and industries including processed food and beverages and textiles.

Urban population

Accra has seen its population grow throughout the years and given the city’s role as the capital and first point of call in Ghana. It is expected that Accra will see continued growth well into the future.

The most recent estimates (2012) show that the population of urbanised Accra is 2.27 million, it’s urban area covers 225.67 square kilometers of land. While the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA), currently has about four million inhabitants which makes it the 11th largest metropolitan area in Africa. GAMA‘s entire metropolis has grown to nearly 900 square kilometers.

In recent years, the female population grew much faster than the male population. This may be the result of greater migration of females into the region in response to the employment and other opportunities provided by urbanisation in the area of trading and services.

Approximately 56 per cent of the population of Accra is very youthful (under age of 24). There is a slightly higher population of males than females in the city, which is on par with numbers recorded across the country.

Data shows that about 45 per cent of Accra’s residents are immigrants that originally lived in other African countries. There are multiple low-income housing areas located in Accra, with about 58 per cent of the total population living in one of these areas.

Major ethnic groups living in Accra apart from the Ga indigenes are the Akans, Ga-Dangmes and Ewes. The largest religious group is Christians, which make up 83 per cent of the population. Muslims make up 10.2 per cent of the population, and 4.6 per cent claim no religion.

Challenges

The rapid and continued growth of Accra, has nonetheless come with several challenges to the city’s infrastructure due to the increased pressure on them. As is to be expected in a city that attracts more people every day than in other places in the country, intense vehicular traffic occurs on most of the roads, especially during the early morning and evening rush hours when people commute to work.

Making the traffic worse is the fact that about 95 per cent of commuters have no other choice but to depend on road transport to and from work. As public transport is also not very well developed a lot of people go to work by their private cars while some also rely on motorcycle transport popularly referred to as ‘okada’ which city authorities have tried desperately to clamp down on because of safety issues.

Another major headache of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA), the biggest city authority and other municipal and district assemblies is poor sanitation and waste management, as Accra alone generates 3,000 tonnes of waste daily.

The unavailability of landfills or dump sites has further aggravated the problem with some informal waste collectors who use tricycles known as ‘aboboya’ dumping anywhere they find expedient such as at the side of major roads. It is not uncommon to find heaps of waste dumped along the routes used by the tricycles.

This is notwithstanding the good efforts of well-known waste management companies such as Zoomlion Ghana Limited which is currently partnering many local governments (district assemblies) in the country to manage waste. The company and its partners have established two recycling and compost plants in Accra alone with another near completion in Kumasi, the second largest city in Ghana.

At the commissioning of the second plant (an integrated recycling and compost plant) in Accra on April 5, 2019, the founder of the company, Mr Joseph Siaw Agyepong, assured that similar plants would be built in all the other regions of the country.

Indeed, it is due to the serious challenge of managing waste that the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, pledged when he took office that before the end of his term, he would ensure that Accra became the cleanest city in Africa. But that dream is far from being realised because of the enormous challenge of waste management in the city.

Howbeit, at the commissioning of the new sanitation facility on  April 5, the Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia said it was as a result of President Akufo-Addo’s commitment to rid the country of filth, that there had been a marked improvement of solid waste management in the Accra metropolis from 16.6 per cent to 53 per cent.

Another challenge that the city of Accra is constantly grappling with is the distribution of electricity power to its ever-increasing clientele despite the country having an installed capacity of over 4,000 MW as of November 2018. Due to the load on some existing transformers residents in certain locations sometimes experience power outages.

Urban development

In an interview, an urban development expert and Architect, Mrs Adodo Nuviadenu said she was unaware of any government measures to promote urban development. “The issue is that some of these things do not come to the professionals, and that is what I also think is wrong with the country,” she said.

Mrs Nuviadenu opined that that development had contributed to the country’s present state where there were haphazard developments in cities such as Accra because people who were not experts rather lobbied for construction jobs.

She urged professionals to put themselves together and take over their roles in development and “find a way to make the government and people know that we studied for this, and this is what we can do otherwise we are not going anyway in the country.”

In her view, foreign investment played a lot of roles in development such as financing, technology and in infrastructure development.

Mrs Nuviadenu suggested that in construction and development everything from abroad must not be copied but they must be adapted to suit the local conditions, while there was no need to reinvent the wheel in developmental projects so as not to incur so much cost.

Concerning developments in the city Mr Anthony Gyamera of the Land Use and Spatial Planning Authority (LUSPA) said there had been legal and institutional reforms and that the district office had been ceded to the local government service which made it a physical planning department under the metro, municipal and district assemblies, while the headquarters and regional office of LUSPA will be doing the implementation. “Then we would be guiding them with finance and standards and support them with training.”

He, however, said the Authority was understaffed with less than 45 per cent capacity which presented several challenges in their work. He stated that there were plans to develop new cities in the future but what was lacking was the implementation of those plans.

“We have all the plans – beautiful, but the implementation. All the laws are not being implemented. We leave people to litter around without taking any action against them. People build along waterways without any action taken against them. All the open spaces are being encroached upon.” he lamented.

Touching on the importance of foreign investment on development, Mr Gyamera said some colleagues had benefitted from training abroad on spatial planning and logistics provided “and now we are able to develop a number of spatial plans.”

He intimated that very soon LUSPA will be developing a spatial plan showing all the disaster risk areas of the city so that action can be taken, adding, “So we can map the areas and the investors will take it Indeed, many developments in Accra and other cities could not have been done without foreign investment which comprise not only finance but also technology and expertise. The latest of such foreign partnerships, the first phase of a US$ 2 billion Ghana – Sinohydro deal, was launched by President Akufo-Addo in Tamale in the Northern Region on Wednesday, April 10, 2019.

Apart from the first flyover and 10 km of ancillary roads in Tamale, Accra will also benefit from the Master Project Support Agreement (MPSA) with the construction of 84km of some Accra inner city roads as well as the dualization of 14km of the road from a suburb – Adenta, to Dodowa to reduce congestion, improve safety and reduce travel time.