Traffic & Transport

We are now beginning to understand the meaning of “hot”. The dry, Harmattan season is gradually drawing to a close and humidity is gradually increasing, together with temperatures up to 40+ degrees centigrade. We just sweat all the time, and within 5 minutes of having a cold shower, we are sweating again. Even the Ghanaians are complaining about the heat. However, we are coping pretty well with it, and actually enjoying it. We just have to slow down and do everything at a much slower pace. It is great to ride our bikes, because this gives us a lovely breeze.

As the development of Ghana’s infrastructure, including improvements to transport, is essential for the future, we decided to say a bit about transport in this blog entry.

Our 17 hour bus journey from Accra to Wa and our 19 hour bus journey from Wa to Kumasi have featured in earlier blog entries. These are not typical, we have just drawn a short straw on our long-distance bus travel. There are no operating passenger rail services in Ghana, so the bus is the only affordable option for long-distance travel. There is an airport at Tamale some 7 hours south of us, from which you can fly to Accra for many, many, times the bus fare!

The government-owned Metro Mass bus services cover the whole country.

Private companies also operate on some local and inter-city routes.

Ticket prices are very low, even for quite long distances. It costs us the equivalent of about £10 to travel to Accra. There is a proposal to privatise the Metro Mass company. We wonder how long, under private ownership, the company would keep all routes open throughout Ghana. At present you can travel to anywhere in Ghana on this service along the major roads - provided you don’t mind being squashed into the bus with at least 100 other people. This always makes travel really interesting, because you really get to know your fellow passengers.



Once in a town, transfer to a trotro is very easy. These vehicles leave bus stations, known in Ghana as lorry parks, when they are full - and we mean full. We travelled on the one pictured below. It was licensed to carry 27 people; 6 rows of 4 behind the driver and a front seat for 2. With the passengers come babies and every sort of luggage.

On the roof of trotros you will see sacks of grain, charcoal, baskets of fruit, bicycles and goats. When we travelled to Accra from Koforidua over Christmas, we bought an extra seat for our luggage. People are happy with this. The driver gets the money for the seat and the trotro is full earlier, so leaves earlier. Below is a row of trotros at a lorry park in Wa waiting for passengers.

Most drivers and passengers appear to feel comforted by quotes from the Bible or Koran that are painted on their vehicles.

In the south of the country, there are more cars than in the north, and the traffic jams make the M6 hold-ups seem insignificant. One can take 4 hours to travel 10 km in Accra at some times. In our first week in Ghana we had first hand experience of this in moving by coach from our hotel to the VSO offices, a distance of 5km. It took over 2 hours.

Catalytic converters are not common and hence air pollution in the large cities is horrendous. We are pleased to be in the quiet north with our bicycles.

45% of road deaths in Ghana, are of pedestrians. The rule is that driving/riding is on the right hand side of the road, but generally people just drive wherever there is a space. Pavements, road signs and junction markings are all needed. A recent conference on road safety made the link between poverty and road accidents. Poor people walk everywhere and are vulnerable to being hit by vehicles. After pedestrians, the second highest proportion of deaths comes from tro-tro accidents. Again, it is poor people who use these services most. For young men, road injuries are the second leading cause of premature death after HIV/AIDS.

In our first week we bought bicycles. We were well advised to go for second hand bikes without gears. If a bike has been on Ghanaian roads for some time, then its components are robust and easily repaired. Modern, cheap imports from China have complex gearing and flashy additions which break down and fall off in a very short time. Wa is flat and we do not require gears. We need a bike that can carry our shopping. Our purchases are often heavy, as things to drink are very important (and we do not mean alcohol in this heat!). Our bikes have served us well; a few punctures and one collapsed and rebuilt wheel is all we have had to cope with so far.

Being in the North, there are many bike repair shops, so each time we have had a puncture, the equivalent of 20p has enabled a repair without even getting our hands dirty. One particularly heavy parcel of computer components caused three spokes to snap on Haydn’s back wheel. By the time the bike was taken in for repair, there were many loose spokes. In the UK, the wheel would have been deemed irreparable. The equivalent of £1.50 was the cost of a wheel rebuild, and it has held up well ever since!

Cycling is very popular in the north of the country. Most people can’t afford motorbikes, known locally as motos. Certainly cars are out of the question for 99% of the population. Mitsubishi, Toyota, Nissan, Ford and Land Rover, 4WD vehicles, SUVs and pick-ups do exist, but it is only the business owners and directors of NGOs who can afford to run these vehicles, let alone buy them. The pictures below show two contrasting vehicles!

Motos are popular and we love to see the families on the way to school in the morning, with 4 or 5 children being carried on one motobike - a picture we have yet to capture!!

Goods are brought to the Upper West mainly on heavy lorries. It never ceases to amaze us to watch the variety of goods that are unloaded from one truck: reams of paper, boxes of tomato sauce, sardines, Blue Band margarine, bicycle tyres, bags of grain, foam mattresses, and the list goes on.

We have recently had a new volunteer working in Wa. He is an engineer and is helping the government agency for agriculture to bring into use a combine harvester imported from China. During its first major outing, the drive belt snapped 8 times as the ground used to grow rice has never been properly cleared for mechanisation. The heavy soil and stones were too much for the belt to cope with and it kept snapping.

Replacing a combine harvester drive belt proved an interesting logistical exercise. The first time it broke, someone drove from Wa to Accra and back again (712 km each way) to buy one. He did have the foresight to buy 4, but they only lasted a week. The next consignment was ordered by telephone. The package of belts was put on a bus and the delivery was in Wa within 24 hours. Things do get done - in the Ghanaian way!

A footnote for all sports car enthusiasts - we have yet to see one in Ghana! I wonder why?

Planning for road improvements is going on, but the finances are unreliable. There are 32,000 kilometres of road in Ghana. Of these, 26,000 kilometres are dirt roads. The abandoned roadworks around the country are testament to broken promises. In 2007, a national conference on road building and road safety, argued for better strategic planning and used the following quote from Ghana’s first president:
“Thought without action is empty. Action without thought is blind”
Kwame Nkrumah