A high-powered steering committee chaired by the Ga Mantse, King Tackie Teiko Tsuru II, has been inaugurated to transform Accra into a cleaner, greener, healthier and more attractive city, with corporate Ghana at the centre of a new push to adopt and maintain the capital’s streets and public spaces.
The Minister of Local Government, Chieftaincy and Religious Affairs, Mahama Ayariga, inaugurated the Accra Green and Clean City Initiative Committee at the Ministry’s conference room on Thursday, October 15, 2026. At the heart of the initiative is the Adopt a Street or Corridor Programme, which will encourage corporate organisations to partner with the ministry and relevant district assemblies to adopt designated streets, road medians, roundabouts and public spaces for regular cleaning, landscaping, tree planting and maintenance as part of their corporate social responsibility. The programme is designed to give corporate entities an opportunity to incorporate street maintenance and greening into their sustainability commitments.
The committee’s membership reflects the breadth of the challenge, bringing together the Chief Executive Officers of the Ghana Chamber of Commerce and Industry; the Private Enterprises Foundation; the National Road Safety Authority; the Environmental Protection Authority; the Ghana Bankers Association; the Ghana Insurance Association; the Ghana Highway Authority; and the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications. It also includes all Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies, the acting Director of the Department of Parks and Gardens, the Director of the Department of Urban Roads, the acting Managing Director of the Electricity Company of Ghana, and the Managing Director of the Ghana Water Company Limited.
A Mandate to Mobilise Corporate Ghana
Ayariga said the committee’s mandate includes developing clear guidelines for the Adopt a Street or Corridor Programme and identifying and documenting priority streets, city entry routes, roundabouts and public spaces suitable for adoption, including their condition and maintenance needs. The committee is also expected to produce a corporate partnership and resource mobilisation plan, identify prospective corporate partners, prepare a targeted engagement strategy, and develop a standard invitation package outlining the benefits, expectations and responsibilities associated with adopting a street or corridor. The minister charged the committee to develop an implementation framework, identify priority corridors, mobilise corporate partners and establish monitoring mechanisms to track progress.
The minister said Accra is the administrative capital and the face of Ghana through which the majority of people enter the country, yet challenges related to littering, poor maintenance of public spaces and inadequate greening continue to undermine its appearance and livability. “Government recognises that these challenges cannot be addressed by public institutions alone. We must mobilise the full force of our traditional authorities, corporate Ghana, communities and citizens to complement government efforts through sustainable partnerships,” he said.
Ayariga cautioned the assemblies and agencies that, as regulators, they were expected to guide the corporate entities on how to brand the streets, but the decision as to which contractor would execute the work lay in the hands of the entities, adding that the assemblies were not to impose a service provider on the corporates.
Ga Mantse: “A Clean Street Initiative Was Long Overdue”
In his response, King Tackie Teiko Tsuru II said Accra was nearly overwhelmed by sanitation problems and that the threat was imminent. He pointed out that single-use plastics had become a menace, noting that out of the 40 companies that manufactured single-use plastics, only 20 per cent of them were recycled. He said a clean street initiative was long overdue, adding that the country could not afford to let its waste management and sanitation challenges overwhelm it.
The Ga Mantse’s appointment as chair is significant. As the Overlord of the Ga State, he has repeatedly positioned himself at the forefront of sanitation advocacy, describing cleanliness as a duty tied to the dignity and prosperity of the city. “As the father and overlord of Accra, it is my duty to ensure that the city remains clean,” he said during a previous National Sanitation Day exercise, adding that “cleanliness brings prosperity and good health to our people”. He has also called for robust legal frameworks and effective enforcement mechanisms to address Ghana’s sanitation challenges, pointing to the deteriorating state of landfill sites and recurrent cholera outbreaks as indicators of systemic failure.
A City Under Sanitation Strain
The new initiative comes against a backdrop of mounting evidence that Accra’s waste management system is under severe strain. The Kpone Landfill, the only dumping site serving the eastern corridor of the Greater Accra Region, was reported in February 2026 to be nearing full capacity, with the Local Government Minister at the time warning that 10 metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies would have nowhere to dump hospital, domestic and industrial waste if critical steps were not taken. The minister described the situation as a “sanitation time bomb”.
Ghana is estimated to lose more than GH¢6.2 billion annually through flood-related destruction, healthcare costs and environmental degradation caused by poor waste management. The country generates roughly 12,710 tonnes of solid waste daily, yet only about 10 per cent is properly managed, with open dumping and burning remaining the default in many communities. Air pollution was responsible for about 32,500 deaths in Ghana in 2023, with Accra alone seeing thousands of premature deaths annually from PM₂.₅ exposure.
The plastic problem is particularly acute. Ghana generates approximately 1 million metric tonnes of plastic waste every year, a figure growing at an estimated 5.4 per cent annually, yet only about 9.5 per cent of that plastic waste is currently collected for recycling. The remainder ends up in drains, rivers, oceans and communities, choking waterways and contributing to the recurrent flooding that has plagued the capital. Accra’s drainage systems have been repeatedly overwhelmed by indiscriminate dumping of refuse and silt accumulation, with government officials pointing to blocked drainage systems and poor sanitation as major contributors to flood disasters.
A Broader Push for Environmental Discipline
The Accra Green and Clean City Initiative is the latest in a series of measures by the government to confront the capital’s sanitation crisis. In September 2025, President John Dramani Mahama relaunched National Sanitation Day, a monthly clean-up exercise aimed at instilling a culture of cleanliness and curbing sanitation-related diseases. The Ministry of Local Government has also overseen a nationwide 90-day waste evacuation exercise launched in September 2026 to rid Accra of accumulated waste.
The new committee is expected to complement these efforts by tapping into private-sector resources and corporate expertise. Participating organisations under the Adopt a Street programme are expected to undertake regular cleaning, landscaping and tree planting as part of their corporate social responsibility activities. The initiative is intended to promote sustained collaboration between government and corporate organisations to improve public spaces and make Accra cleaner, greener and more attractive.
For a city that serves as the gateway to Ghana and a symbol of national identity, the stakes are high. As Ayariga put it, the challenges facing Accra cannot be solved by government alone — and the new committee will be judged on whether it can turn corporate goodwill into visible, lasting change on the capital’s streets.
