A Nation Drowning in Its Own Refuse
On the banks of Accra’s Korle Lagoon, the air is heavy with the smell of decay. The water, once a shimmering ribbon through the city, now flows thick and black, choked by layers of plastic bags, food scraps, and industrial waste. Along the banks, children play among the debris, their laughter competing with the incessant buzz of flies, a heartbreaking metaphor for a nation that has normalised living with its own filth.
From Tamale to Takoradi, similar scenes unfold daily. Open dumps smoulder on the outskirts of towns, refuse piles high in gutters, and waste trucks appear only sporadically, if at all. Ghana generates approximately 12,710 tonnes of solid waste daily, yet only 10 per cent is collected and disposed of properly. The mathematics of negligence are stark: we produce nearly 4.6 million tonnes annually, but manage less than half a million tonnes responsibly.
Between 65-75% of generated municipal solid waste ends up in landfills, with open dumping being the predominant form across most communities. This isn’t waste management, it’s waste abandonment. The Korle Lagoon and Odaw River systems bear witness to decades of this environmental vandalism, their ecosystems destroyed by our collective failure to treat refuse as anything more than someone else’s problem.
For nearly two decades, a single centralised arrangement shaped the system that was supposed to manage this crisis. Local assemblies often complained they paid for services they could neither verify nor enforce. That fundamental imbalance—payment without accountability, contracts without transparency- explains why our streets look the way they do more than any single missed collection.
The Contract That Finally Expired
A turning point arrived in June 2025 when the government confirmed that the long-running Youth Employment Agency and Zoomlion sanitation contract, which expired in 2024, would not be renewed. President Mahama’s administration committed to auditing all payments made to Zoomlion after the contract’s expiry and promised to improve sweeper wages using savings from ending the arrangement.
Zoomlion publicly clarified that the contract had reached its natural expiration in September 2024 after a six-month extension, pushing back against suggestions of government termination. The company stated it would “actively participate in forthcoming competitive procurement processes” while defending its track record. Whatever label one prefers—expiry, non-renewal, or termination—the practical reality remains: the two-decade arrangement has ended, and a new approach is finally possible.
This represents more than a contractual change; it’s an opportunity for fundamental system redesign. The old model concentrated waste management in distant corporate boardrooms. The new approach can place responsibility where it belongs: in the hands of local assemblies who live with the consequences of their decisions.
The Employment Mirage and Lost Economic Value
Supporters of the centralised model often pointed to employment numbers as justification. Yet auditors and local officials repeatedly raised concerns about ghost workers, unpaid arrears, and missing documentation. Research shows that 80% of households lack basic knowledge about proper waste disposal methods, suggesting that whatever employment was created failed to include meaningful community education components.
The old system created what economists term “pseudo-employment”—positions that existed primarily to justify contractor payments rather than deliver measurable outcomes. Workers operated in a governance vacuum where local assemblies couldn’t monitor performance effectively, and contractors faced minimal consequences for service failures. This arrangement served neither the workers, who lacked job security and professional development, nor communities receiving substandard services despite paying premium rates.
But Ghana has overlooked an even vaster opportunity: the economic value locked within its waste streams. Research indicates that 0.318 kg/person/day of Ghana’s waste consists of biodegradable materials—primarily organics and paper that could be converted into valuable soil amendments through controlled composting. With proper segregation and processing, this organic fraction alone could support thriving agricultural input industries while solving disposal challenges.
Studies show food waste comprises 40% of household refuse, with plastics accounting for 5.5%. These aren’t disposal problems—they’re resource recovery opportunities. Plastic waste, given its environmental persistence, presents particular potential for conversion into construction materials, packaging products, and industrial inputs. Yet our current system treats everything as undifferentiated refuse destined for environmentally destructive dumping.
The circular economy isn’t just an environmental buzzword; it’s an economic imperative. Countries that have embraced comprehensive waste-to-resource systems report significant job creation, reduced import dependencies, and improved environmental health outcomes. Ghana could lead this transformation in West Africa, but only if we abandon the centralised contractor model that has proven incapable of capturing value beyond collection contracts.
Why Local Control Is the Only Real Solution
The fundamental insight driving successful waste management worldwide is simple: local problems require local solutions. Urban markets in Kumasi, coastal fishing communities in Cape Coast, and dispersed farming settlements in the Northern regions don’t generate identical waste profiles. A single national template imposed through centralised contracts will always underperform because it cannot adapt to local realities.
Metropolitan, municipal, and district assemblies already possess the institutional knowledge, community connections, and democratic accountability structures necessary for effective waste management. What they’ve lacked is direct operational control and adequate resources. The expired contractor arrangement treated assemblies as passive payers rather than active managers, creating a system where responsibility and authority were fatally separated.
Municipal waste managers consistently report that increased urbanisation has outstripped local authorities’ ability to manage waste in a sanitary manner. But this capacity gap exists partly because assemblies were never given the chance to develop comprehensive waste management capabilities. Instead, they were relegated to funding distant contractors whose operations they couldn’t meaningfully oversee.
International evidence strongly supports decentralised approaches. In the United Kingdom, local councils operate integrated waste management systems combining household collection, recycling programmes, and disposal facility management under unified authority control. Performance monitoring occurs through standardised metrics reported to the national government, creating accountability while preserving local autonomy.
Swedish municipalities have achieved waste diversion rates exceeding 99% through comprehensive recycling programmes, energy recovery facilities, and strict disposal regulations. Crucially, these achievements emerged from local innovation supported by national policy frameworks, not from centralised mandates imposed from above.
South Korea’s experience demonstrates the potential for rapid transformation through local leadership. Korean municipalities reduced per capita waste generation by over 30% while achieving recycling rates above 70%, primarily through aggressive local policies backed by national support structures.
Technology as an Employment Multiplier, Not Replacement
Critics often argue that assembly-based systems lack the technical sophistication for modern waste management. This misses the transformative potential of appropriate technology adoption coupled with local control.
The mechanisation of street sweeping through mobile units offers assemblies a pathway to improve service quality while creating skilled employment opportunities. Compact sweepers costing £80,000-£160,000 per unit are ideal for narrow residential streets and congested urban centres. Standard municipal sweepers (£120,000-£240,000) can handle main roads and commercial districts. Heavy-duty vacuum units (£160,000-£320,000) can tackle construction sites and industrial areas.
Rather than eliminating employment, mechanisation would create a sophisticated job ecosystem. Each sweeper requires multiple trained operators for continuous coverage, generating 15-25 positions per unit in larger assemblies. Technical support roles—mechanics, route supervisors, equipment coordinators—would expand significantly. Training centres established to build national capacity for municipal equipment operations could create hundreds of additional instructor and support positions.
Conservative projections suggest that a phased national rollout across Ghana’s 260 assemblies could generate 20,000-30,000 direct operational jobs and 5,000-8,000 technical support positions while dramatically improving service coverage and quality. These represent net employment gains, as mechanisation would enable assemblies to extend services to previously uncovered areas.
Digital integration offers additional opportunities. Route optimisation software could improve collection efficiency and reduce operational costs. Mobile applications could facilitate resident communication and complaint reporting. Geographic information systems could support facility planning and environmental monitoring. However, technology adoption must remain appropriate to local contexts and capabilities, avoiding the dependency relationships that characterised the old contractor model.
Financing the Revolution: Making Waste Pay for Itself
Sustainable financing represents the greatest implementation challenge. Current assembly revenue streams—property rates and central government transfers—prove inadequate for comprehensive waste management services. New financing mechanisms must combine revenue diversification with cost recovery principles while maintaining affordability.
Research indicates that 59.1% of households express willingness to pay for improved waste collection services, suggesting significant potential for user fee systems structured progressively to protect low-income families. Commercial and industrial generators would pay full cost-recovery rates, cross-subsidising residential services while ensuring financial sustainability.
Revenue generation from waste processing activities—compost sales, recyclable material marketing, small-scale biogas production—would create additional income streams while incentivising value recovery over disposal. Assemblies could also access emerging carbon credit markets for methane emission reductions and sustainable waste management practices.
The key is designing systems where waste management becomes revenue-generating rather than revenue-consuming. Properly structured, these activities can transform sanitation from a budget drain into a community asset that pays for expanded services while creating employment and business opportunities.
Implementation Roadmap: Proving the Model Works
Reform will fail without systematic implementation that proves success at each stage. Ghana should begin with carefully selected pilot assemblies—perhaps 30 locations representing different urban, peri-urban, and rural contexts. These pilots must demonstrate measurable improvements in collection coverage, recycling rates, and community satisfaction while maintaining transparent financial reporting.
Success metrics should include route completion rates, waste diversion percentages, response times to citizen complaints, and employment quality indicators. Regular scorecards published online would allow residents to track whether their assembly is delivering promised improvements. This transparency would build confidence for broader implementation while identifying best practices for replication.
Phase two should expand to regional clusters sharing composting and materials recovery facilities, achieving economies of scale while maintaining local control through joint ownership structures. National training centres for operators, technicians, and supervisors should be established during this phase, building the human resource foundation for full implementation.
The rollout must be paired with revised Environmental Sanitation Policy frameworks, ensuring that legal authority and operational capacity grow together. Auditor-General reports on District Assemblies Common Fund management have repeatedly highlighted weak controls and undocumented payments. This reform must demonstrate that every cedi buys verifiable services that both assemblies and communities can monitor effectively.
The Cost of Continued Inaction
If Ghana maintains the status quo, costs will compound exponentially. Public health expenditures will rise as contaminated water sources and air pollution create disease burdens. Flooding will worsen as plastic debris blocks drainage systems. International investors and tourists will increasingly avoid cities where basic infrastructure fails visibly.
Climate impacts will accelerate as organic waste decomposes uncontrollably, releasing methane—a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Every year of delay makes environmental recovery more expensive and economic opportunities more difficult to capture.
The window for a manageable transition is narrowing. Ghana’s waste generation rates are increasing with economic development and urbanisation. Rapid population growth continues outstripping waste management capacity, making comprehensive reform more urgent with each passing year.
Seizing the Reset Moment
The end of the YEA-Zoomlion arrangement created space for fundamental rethinking. President Mahama’s commitment to competitive procurement led by assemblies, improved wages for workers, and recovery of unauthorised payments establishes a new baseline for accountability and local control.
Ghana now has an aligned path forward: revise policy frameworks to enable local management, transfer responsibility to assemblies with transparent performance requirements, professionalise the workforce through proper training and career development, mechanise operations where beneficial, and capture economic value from waste streams rather than treating them as disposal problems.
These changes would transform waste management from a national embarrassment into a model for sustainable development. More importantly, they would demonstrate that Ghana can solve complex infrastructure challenges through democratic institutions, local innovation, and community ownership rather than dependence on distant contractors accountable to no one.
The streets of Accra, Kumasi, and every district capital could become showcases of environmental stewardship rather than monuments to institutional failure. Children could play beside clean waterways instead of garbage-choked lagoons. Workers could build careers in professional waste management rather than endure pseudo-employment in accountability-free systems.
This revolution requires nothing more radical than giving power back to the people who live with the consequences of waste management decisions. The assemblies are ready. The community demand exists. The financing models work internationally. The technology is available. The only question remaining is whether Ghana’s leaders have the political courage to choose local accountability over contractor convenience.
The time for revolution is now. Our cities and our children deserve nothing less.
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About the Author:
Dominic Senayah, an International Relations Researcher who dives deep into the realms of Trade, Migration, and Diplomacy. With a rich background in Business Development and Marketing Communications, I bring a unique perspective to my analysis of global issues. My goal is to enrich academic discussions and enhance public understanding of the intricate dynamics that shape international relations.
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DISCLAIMER: The Views, Comments, Opinions, Contributions and Statements made by Readers and Contributors on this platform do not necessarily represent the views or policy of Multimedia Group Limited.
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