World Bank releases $150m for Odaw Basin flood control
In order to strengthen flood resilience in the Odaw River Basin in the Greater Accra Region, the World Bank has released $150 million to the government as supplementary finance.
The financing will be used to support the Greater Accra Resilient and Integrated Development (GARID) Project, which aims to reduce flood risk and improve solid waste management for more than 2.5 million residents of the Odaw River Basin, among other goals.
Flood control
“The bank is happy to support Ghana in these times of macroeconomic challenges and to help contribute to a comprehensive flood management approach through this additional financing of GARID,” said Pierre Laporte, the World Bank’s country director for Ghana, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.
Mr. Laporte went on to say that the act was essential to fulfilling “the World Bank’s twin goals of ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity as well as increasing the resilience of African cities”.
“With the addition of resettlement compensation for roughly 2,800 project-affected individuals, the Contingency Emergency Response Component (CERC) was triggered in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, creating a funding deficit.
The country director mentioned that it also handles cost overruns for significant infrastructure expenditures caused by inflation and engineering requirements.
According to Catherine Lynch, Senior Urban Specialist and Task Team Leader for the GARID project, “the planned investments in flood mitigation infrastructure under GARID will directly reduce the flooding risks for urbanizing and economically productive areas of the Greater Accra Region, limiting the direct flood hazards on more than 138,000 people.”
The Local Government, Decentralization and Rural Development, Works and Housing, Sanitation and Water Resources Ministries are working together on the interministerial GARID project, which runs from 2020 to 2025.
In the targeted villages of the Odaw River Basin, the project will continue to give priority to investments that increase flood risk resilience and boost solid waste management systems.
It will offer extra funding for the structural improvements that will raise the basin area’s detention capacity for flood mitigation.
Additionally, it will offer upstream interventions pertaining to the management of urban solid waste as well as targeted treatments in the basin’s low-lying zones.
Through investments funded by the Climate Resilient Drainage and Flood Mitigation Measures component, the GARID project will also yield substantial benefits for adapting to climate change.
The establishment of GARID by the government with assistance from the World Bank was required due to the significant economic and social effects of the flood event on June 3, 2015, which affected 53,000 people and resulted in significant losses and damage estimated at $55 million and $105 million in reconstruction costs.
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