GH¢195 million was committed to the Dome-Berekuso-Kitase road in 2022. The deadline passed in 2024. The plan says it is finished
In August 2026 residents of Dome-Kwabenya, Comet, Berekuso, Agyementi and Kitase left their homes and marched. They petitioned the President through their Members of Parliament. Their grievance was a 23-kilometre road that has been under contract since 2022 and is still not built. Their sharpest complaint was that the road had been listed as completed in the Road Sector Medium-Term Development Plan for 2026 to 2029.
At the end of that road sits Ashesi University at Berekuso, a private, not-for-profit institution founded in 2002 and on its present campus since 2011. It teaches students from Nigeria, Kenya, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, South Africa and elsewhere on the continent, and it earns this country foreign exchange and reputation that no publicity campaign could buy.
This article asks three questions of the state and makes one appeal to His Excellency President John Dramani Mahama. Where did the money go, who certified this road as completed, and when will the outstanding works be finished? The appeal is that the balance of works be placed under the Big Push programme and executed to a published timetable.
- The contract
On 6 July 2022, the Ministry of Roads and Highways signed a contract with First Sky Limited for the rehabilitation of the 23-kilometre Dome-Kitase road, designated Regional Route 98. The sum was about GH¢195 million, financed by the Government of Ghana and the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development. Parliament had approved the Kuwaiti facility in late 2019. Construction commenced on 15 July 2022 with a presidential sod-cutting. The duration was twenty-four months. The completion date was July 2024.
The scope was specific. About 16.3 kilometres of two-lane single carriageway in asphaltic concrete. A 2.8-kilometre dual carriageway arterial with auxiliary lanes for pick-up and drop-off. A one-kilometre two-lane carriageway serving Ashesi University, also in asphaltic concrete. The Ghana Highways Authority was the implementing agency and consultants were appointed.
None of this was an idea on a napkin. It was a funded, designed, supervised public project with a start date and an end date.
- What happened after the cameras left
By early 2023 the contractor was reporting about thirty-five per cent completion and publicly denying that work had stalled. By the middle of 2026 there was no meaningful activity on the Kwabenya to Kitase stretch. The road had been cut to formation level in places and left to the weather. Partially constructed roads deteriorate faster than untouched ones. Along several sections the surface is now worse than it was before the contractor arrived.
The usual explanations will be offered. Certification delays. Payment arrears. Utility relocation. Compensation disputes for affected persons. Each may be true. None of them is an answer to a community that has waited two decades, nor to a university whose students, staff and visitors use that surface every day.
This is also not the first promise made on this corridor. Ministers have stood at Berekuso and pledged the road under one administration after another. The people of the area have heard assurance after assurance. The road is the only evidence that matters, and it has not changed.
- The entry that must be corrected
The listing of this road as completed in the Road Sector Medium-Term Development Plan for 2026 to 2029 is a serious matter. Completed where, and on whose certification?
A road recorded as completed does not attract a fresh allocation. It does not appear on a priority list. It falls off the annual programme of works. Every petition then runs into a ministry whose own documents say the problem has been solved. Until that entry is corrected, the communities and the university are arguing against the official record rather than against a shortage of money.
The public is entitled to a full accounting. How much work has been certified by the Ghana Highways Authority? How much has been paid to the contractor? What remains undrawn in the Kuwait Fund facility? What will the outstanding works cost at today’s prices? These are ordinary questions about public money and they should be answered in writing.
- Who is paying for the delay
The cost of an unfinished road does not vanish. It is transferred to the people who use it.
– Fine red dust settles on homes, shops, food stalls, classrooms and lungs along the corridor, and falls hardest on children and the elderly.
– Commercial drivers spend a large share of weekly takings on suspension repairs, tyres and shock absorbers.
– Ambulances and fire tenders cannot move at ten kilometres an hour and still be useful. A hillside campus reachable only by two broken roads is a standing emergency-response risk.
– Staff, students, traders and farmers each lose the better part of an hour a day to a distance that should take minutes.
Ashesi has already paid twice. It paid for the campus, and it paid for the only properly surfaced stretch at Berekuso out of its own funds. A private, not-for-profit university has been made to build public infrastructure because the responsible authority did not deliver.
- What is at stake nationally
International students choose between campuses. Parents in Lagos, Nairobi and Kigali weigh a broken access road against alternatives in Rwanda, Kenya, South Africa, Morocco and Egypt. Faculty recruitment faces the same test. Donors ask why their money should substitute for a state obligation.
An institution can be strangled without any decision to strangle it. Enrolment softens. The best staff drift away. Capital projects are deferred. Nobody signs anything, and the project dies. Ghana would then have lost an internationally respected university that cost the taxpayer nothing to build, over the balance of works on a 23-kilometre road.
- The appeal
Mr. President, this is a personal appeal, made with respect and without partisan intent.
– Direct the Ministry of Roads and Highways and the Ghana Highways Authority to publish, within thirty days, the true status of Regional Route 98: work certified, sums paid, sums outstanding, the position of the Kuwait Fund facility and the cost to completion.
– Correct the entry in the Road Sector Medium-Term Development Plan 2026-2029 that records this road as completed, and establish how that entry was made.
– Place the outstanding works under the Big Push programme, with a commencement authorisation from the Ministry of Finance and a ring-fenced payment schedule.
– Sequence the Berekuso to Kitase section and the one-kilometre Ashesi University carriageway into the first phase of works.
– Order immediate grading, spot gravelling, drainage clearance and dust suppression on the inhabited sections ahead of the full works.
– Appoint a named project sponsor who reports to you monthly in writing until the road is opened, and publish a dated completion timetable.
The contract exists. The design exists. The funding partner exists. The engineering has been done. What is missing is the decision to finish what was started and the discipline to pay for it on time. That decision rests with you, and it should not wait for another demonstration.
By Nana Annor Amihere II
* The writer Nana ANNOR AMIHERE II is the Mandimase (Overlord), Aiyinasi-Basake Stool Lands, Eastern Nzema Traditional Area.
