What has been learnt?

Effectiveness/success

How does the initiative define success?

GARID defines success across its components through outcomes tied to both infrastructure delivery and institutional capacity, reflecting the priorities of funders, implementing agencies, local governments and communities.

In terms of climate-resilient drainage and flood mitigation, success is understood to be the construction of drains and dredging of the Odaw River, reducing flood exposure and protecting households, businesses and livelihoods in low-income communities. In solid waste management, success is measured by improved collection and disposal services for roughly 500,000 residents, enhanced landfill and transfer station capacity and better management of stormwater drains. Community engagement and transparency are also key indicators, fostering local ownership and responsible practices (World Bank, 2019, 2025).

Participatory upgrading success involves delivering essential infrastructure, such as roads, water connections, streetlighting, amongst others, while strengthening the capacities of the MMAs to plan, implement and maintain improvements. Finally, institutional support is successful when MMAs receive technical assistance, equipment and grants that enable effective project management and long-term resilience planning beyond GARID.

Overlap with the ACRC’s conceptual framework and theory of change

GARID is a good example of the application of the city of systems and political settlement concepts. It is reflected in the integrated nature of the programme and the organisational set-up of the project and aligns closely with ACRC’s framework, particularly the four preconditions for urban reform: mobilised citizens, formal and informal reform coalitions, agencies able to build short- and long-term state capacity, and political commitment from elites.

Mobilised citizens: Community participation is central to GARID’s approach. Residents of flood-prone areas engage in identifying infrastructure priorities and contributing to planning processes, and voluntary community committees support the maintenance of upgraded drains, roads and waste facilities. Local assemblies and community leaders facilitate participatory forums and initiatives, such as the “Sesa Wo Suban Clean Up Exercise”, strengthening collective action, enhancing accountability and ensuring that interventions reflect local priorities.

Formal and informal reform coalitions: GARID demonstrates the value of multi-stakeholder partnerships. Central and local government agencies, private contractors, civil society organisations and donors collaborate to deliver infrastructure, technical support and training. These coalitions bridge communities and institutional actors, providing access to expertise, financing and regulatory approvals, while helping to manage conflicts and streamline implementation.

Agencies building state capacity: GARID strengthens institutional capabilities at multiple levels. Local authorities gain skills in planning, procurement, revenue management and community engagement. Central agencies develop a better understanding of informal settlements’ needs and implement flexible mechanisms, such as performance-based grants, to support sustainable interventions. This dual focus enhances municipal capacity to respond effectively to urban challenges during and beyond the project’s lifecycle.

From the above, GARID demonstrates elite commitment, a critical pillar in the theories of change, by the combination of top-level political mandate and grassroots collaborative governance driving genuine, systemic urban reform. GARID was fundamentally built upon strong political buy-in, which manifested in its politically informed and co-produced design. This elite commitment was the necessary precondition that allowed the project's innovations, such as coordinated citizen mobilisation and the formation of multistakeholder coalitions, to translate into durable change.

How successful has GARID been?

Overall, GARID has made tangible progress in advancing urban resilience and transformation across flood-prone, low-income areas of Greater Accra. It has achieved partial but meaningful success, delivering infrastructure and institutional improvements, mobilising community engagement and laying the foundation for sustained resilience. While some components remain under construction, the initiative demonstrates significant progress against its objectives. GARID’s successes are measured through multiple perspectives, including funders, implementing agencies and beneficiary communities. The assessment here draws on the World Bank’s June 2025 report, local government assessments and observations of community engagement, infrastructure delivery and institutional strengthening.

Climate-resilient drainage and flood mitigation: Civil works contracts were awarded by December 2023, with design work underway for several drains. Contractor mobilisation took place in key communities, including Nima, Akweteyman and Agbogbloshie, as well as along drains such as Achimota and Nima. Progress has been gradual but visible. By May 2025, key drains were under construction: Abofu drain at 27% completion, Nima-Paloma at 7.3%, with Kaneshie drainage works underway. Dredging of the Odaw River, initiated in February 2024, represents a critical upstream intervention to improve water flow and reduce flood risks. Early benefits are apparent in urban markets, such as Abossey Okai and Agbogbloshie, where disruptions from flooding are expected to decline, supporting local livelihoods despite ongoing construction.

Solid waste management improvement: Municipal sanitation enforcement has strengthened, and behaviour-change initiatives are underway. Environmental health officers have received targeted training, while community-led programmes, such as the “Sesa Wo Suban Clean Up Exercise”, have been implemented across ten of 17 MMAs, fostering environmental responsibility and local ownership. In addition to this, 27 community committees have been organised and given solid waste collection equipment, and about 404,900m3 of solid waste from underserved low-income communities has been collected and disposed in sanitary landfills as of June 2025.

Participatory low-income community upgrading: Substantial progress is evident in Nima, where planned roads, drainage, water networks and streetlights are estimated at 68% completion. Aketeyman and Agbogbloshie are around 41% and 45%, respectively. These interventions enhance accessibility, reduce flood exposure and improve living standards for low-income residents, demonstrating the benefits of participatory planning and targeted infrastructure investment.

Institutional strengthening and community engagement: GARID has enhanced bottom-up participation, enabling residents to influence priorities, monitor interventions and support infrastructure maintenance. Local governments have benefited from grants, technical assistance and capacity-building initiatives that improve financial management, project planning and sanitation enforcement.

Provide a response to an eligible crisis or emergency: As of June 2025, GARID has adequately equipped 79 health facilities and tested 19,000 individuals per million of the population for Covid-19.

Additional financial achievements: The additional financing secured in 2023-2024 is for further critical interventions, including compensations, water detention ponds, engineered landfills, waste transfer stations, storm drains in Kaneshie and Nima-Paloma and flood early warning systems. These interventions not only mitigate immediate flood and sanitation risks but also strengthen municipal capacity and support long-term urban resilience.

Understanding limitations

While GARID has achieved notable progress, several challenges have constrained implementation and affected outcomes across targeted communities. The assessment below draws on World Bank reports, project monitoring and empirical observations of stakeholder engagement and infrastructure delivery.

Delays in infrastructure construction: Civil works have progressed more slowly than anticipated. Delays were driven by contractor mobilisation challenges, complex procurement procedures and coordination across 17 MMAs. These delays limited immediate reductions in flood risk for highly vulnerable areas, including major markets such as Agbogbloshie and Abossey Okai. The slow pace reflects broader governance and capacity constraints, including limited technical and operational autonomy at the local level within a highly centralised political settlement.

Compensation and resettlement challenges: Although GARID focuses on upgrading rather than formal resettlement, households affected by infrastructure works, including informal vendors and temporarily displaced residents, have experienced disruptions. Delays in compensation and complex grievance redress mechanisms occasionally eroded trust between communities and implementing authorities. This highlights the broader political challenge of reconciling national oversight with local responsiveness in contexts where informal livelihoods are politically sensitive and highly visible (Sheburah Essien et al., 2025; Wang, 2025).

Complex multistakeholder coordination: GARID involves multiple ministries, local assemblies, donor agencies and private contractors. Aligning priorities, coordinating responsibilities and managing overlapping mandates have often slowed approvals, implementation and reporting. Centralised decisionmaking sometimes limited local autonomy, constraining assemblies’ ability to respond quickly to community needs. This reflects structural features of Ghana’s political settlement, where national ministries retain dominant authority over resource allocation and project oversight, often at the expense of local flexibility.

Financial reallocations and budget pressures: The reallocation of USD 65 million from GARID’s original budget for Covid-19 relief, combined with additional financing to cover cost overruns, complicated planning and delayed certain interventions. Fluctuations in available funds occasionally constrained procurement, contractor mobilisation and expansion of flood mitigation infrastructure. These pressures illustrate the vulnerability of large donor-funded initiatives to shifting political priorities and external shocks.

Community expectations and engagement: Despite participatory planning initiatives, slow infrastructure delivery has sometimes led to resident dissatisfaction, with unmet expectations and temporary disruptions in services. Sustaining trust has required consistent communication, visible demonstration of progress and ongoing engagement through community forums and early wins, such as partial completion of drains, roads and waste facilities.

Environmental and logistical constraints: Construction in densely populated, flood-prone neighbourhoods has faced significant technical and logistical challenges, including limited space for machinery, seasonal rainfall and disruption to traffic and local markets. These factors have extended timelines and increased costs, highlighting the importance of adaptive planning, flexible scheduling and context-specific solutions.

GARID has sought to mitigate these limitations through phased construction approaches, strengthened coordination mechanisms, targeted capacity-building for MMAs and continuous community engagement (GARID, 2025). Lessons from the project underscore that technical interventions alone are insufficient in complex urban contexts; success depends on navigating political settlement dynamics, balancing centralised oversight with local agency and embedding mechanisms for transparent communication, grievance redress and adaptive management.

Potential for scaling and replicating

GARID holds substantial potential for scaling within Ghana and replication in other African cities confronting similar urban challenges, including flooding, rapid urbanisation, and informal settlements. The multi-phase design of the initiative offers a practical framework for replication, allowing other metropolitan areas to adapt its integrated approach to local contexts.

GARID has explicit plans for expansion. Phase 3, estimated at USD 400 million, aims to extend flood mitigation interventions to additional priority basins in the Greater Accra Region beyond the Odaw River Basin (Sheburah Essien et al., 2025: 5). A key challenge for this scaling effort is financing, as funding for Phase 3 has not yet been secured, underscoring the need for robust resource mobilisation strategies to ensure continuity and replication of the initiative’s successes.

GARID’s implementation offers several important lessons for agencies and practitioners designing similar urban resilience initiatives:

• Governance frameworks that combine centralised oversight with meaningful local autonomy. GARID revealed that dominance of national ministries in decisionmaking limited the operational flexibility of local MMAs. While centralised oversight ensured accountability, it slowed approvals and constrained adaptation to local needs. Future initiatives should adopt hybrid governance models that allow local authorities to make operational decisions while maintaining strategic oversight at the national level, improving responsiveness and efficiency.
• Sustain community engagement with institutional and resource support. Community initiatives such as the “Sesa Wo Suban Clean Up Exercise” demonstrated the power of citizen mobilisation to drive ownership and improved environmental practices. However, such efforts are not self-sustaining and require continuous activation, training and resources. Embedding participatory processes from the outset and providing ongoing support strengthens trust, maintains momentum and ensures long-term impact (Wang, 2025).
• Integrate multisectoral coordination from planning through implementation. GARID involved multiple ministries, MMAs, donor agencies and contractors, revealing the risks of siloed operations. Interministerial competition and fragmented planning slowed project implementation, particularly in areas like resettlement and infrastructure procurement. Integrating all stakeholders from the design stage ensures alignment, reduces conflicts and streamlines technical, financial and social interventions.
• Embed inclusive, transparent resettlement and compensation mechanisms. Even with an upgrading focus, affected households experienced disruptions during infrastructure works. Delays in compensation or lack of clear communication sometimes eroded trust. Future projects should implement transparent and inclusive resettlement and compensation strategies to foster community ownership, mitigate resistance and enhance participation in project activities.
• Build financial flexibility and contingency mechanisms to buffer shocks. GARID’s reallocation of USD 65 million for Covid-19 response and additional financing for cost overruns disrupted planning and delayed some interventions. Establishing flexible funding structures, such as performance-based grants or contingency reserves, can help maintain continuity, support timely procurement and protect critical activities from unexpected financial pressures.
• Plan for environmental and logistical constraints through adaptive and phased approaches. Construction in densely populated, flood-prone areas encountered space limitations, seasonal rainfall and disruption to market activities, affecting timelines and costs. Phased construction, adaptive scheduling and proactive mitigation strategies are essential to manage technical, environmental and logistical challenges in complex urban settings.