Between 2020 and 2021, the Millennium Development Authority (MiDA) spent $15.8 million on a Streetlighting Replacement Project that was supposed to illuminate the roads, highways and streets of the national capital, Accra.
Despite the expenditure of millions of US dollars, most of the streets, roads and highways in the national capital remain dark at night, endangering the lives of motorists and pedestrians.
In response to a Right to Information request by The Fourth Estate, MiDA said the project was to cover a total of 523.46 kilometres spanning 20 metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs) in the Greater Accra region.
MiDA’s response indicated that “The Project involved the replacement of High Pressure Sodium and Mercury lamps with highly efficient LED on selected Streets in Accra, thereby reducing energy consumption on the Electricity Company of Ghana’s (ECG) network and also improving illumination on the selected Streets.”
It added that “in all,14,969 luminaires were installed”.
Tetteh Quarshie Roundabout
In addition, in 2022, the Ministry of Energy took a little over GHS3.3 million from Ghana’s oil revenue to pay Prefos Limited, an electrical company, for the provision of streetlighting infrastructure (the light poles, electrical cables and light fixtures) on the Accra-Tema Motorway, according to the 2022 Public Interest and Accountability Committee annual report.
Yet, anyone who drives on the motorway at night will testify to the darkness that pervades Ghana’s most popular highways because of the absence of streetlights.
For three nights, from October 27 to 29, 2023 and 2024, The Fourth Estate visited several major roads and streets in 13 MMDAs in which MiDA implemented its Streetlighting Replacement Project.
Achimota-Amasaman Road
The Fourth Estate team drove on the George Walker Bush Highway, the Tetteh Quarshie Interchange, the Liberation Road, the Accra-Tema Motorway, and the Black Star Square among many others.
The team found that although there were street light poles on most of these streets, most of them delivered no lighting.
MiDA and the Ministry of Roads and Highways did not respond to questions The Fourth Estate sent them about the Streetlighting Replacement Project.
The Fourth Estate spoke to several motorists and residents in Accra, who confirmed that the lack of functioning streetlights on many roads in the city endangered their lives and those of pedestrians.
Accra-Tema Toll booth – Motorway
Edward Kyei-Baffour, a driver with an online ride hailing platform, often works at night. He tells The Fourth Estate that because of poor visibility, drivers often knock down pedestrians at night.
“When you reach a location where streetlights don’t work and the pedestrian is not wearing a reflective cloth, you will accidentally knock them down,” he says. He believes that poor visibility is a major cause of frequent knockdowns at night.
“Recently, at Akweteyman, a colleague driver knocked down two ladies around 9pm,” he said. “They were on the N1 Highway. Because of lack of visibility, and the fact that the stretch is also dark, and the clothes of the ladies were not reflective, mistakenly, he knocked them down.”
Ofankor-Barrier-Nsawam Road
Kyei-Baffour says the dimly lit roads force most drivers to always turn on their headlights. But because some cars have stronger headlights than others, they blind other drivers on the road, causing havoc.
Michael Kwaku Agamah, another driver with an online ride hailing platform, told The Fourth Estate that he took the advice of a mechanic who told him to buy a stronger headlight to improve his visibility while driving at night.
“My headlight is 100 watts. Before, it was 70 watts,” he says. “Somebody who does not have 100 watts but has 70 watts will crash in potholes and will burst his tyre.”
Mr Agamah lamented that when drivers get caught up in traffic in areas where there are no streetlights, they are often attacked by armed robbers.
That was the fate of Sophia Odoley Sagoe. On July 29, 2024, she was accosted by two men while walking home from work on the Teshie Link Road. She says the men left her stranded after they forcibly took her phone and bag.
“The place was very quiet and dark. If there was light on that stretch, I don’t think they could have done what they did,” she says.
In an interview with The Fourth Estate, the Director-General of the National Road Safety Authority, David Osafo Adonteng, said street lighting should be a basic necessity for motorists and residents in Accra.
“Night crashes happen to be very significant in our road crashes,” he says. “If you go on the N1, between Tetteh Quarshie and Lapaz, people are driving into disabled vehicles because they are unable to see ahead of them.”
According to the Accra Metropolitan Assembly’s Road Safety Reports (2019 to 2022), the pattern of crashes in the city shows that more people are killled following crashes that occur between 6pm and 10pm.
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