Financing sanitation: Ghana’s path to public health security

Before 2012, poor sanitation in Accra and Kumasi became a silent public health disaster.

Without treatment plants, human waste from homes, schools, and public toilets was dumped directly into open drains, lagoons, or the sea, especially at the notorious Lavender Hill in Accra.

A 2011 Ghana Health Service report indicated that Accra alone recorded over 10,000 cholera cases and more than 100 deaths.

Kumasi faced similar outbreaks, especially in informal settlements lacking basic sanitation.

The economic loss was massive.

Ghana’s poor sanitation cost the country US$290 million every year, about 1.6 per cent of the GDP, according to a 2012 World Bank report.

Of this, US$54 million went into treating preventable diseases like cholera and diarrhea.

Tragically, 19,000 Ghanaians died each year from diarrheal diseases, including over 5,100 children under five.

Poor sanitation left hospitals overwhelmed, families grieving, and communities vulnerable.

These deaths were avoidable.

All it needed was infrastructure to treat faecal sludge safely — something Ghana lacked for decades.

Historical perspective

Before 2012, Ghana’s attempts to manage faecal sludge were marked by failure.

Government-led and donor-funded projects struggled due to poor planning, weak institutions, and a lack of sustainable funding.

One of the earliest failures was the Accra Sewerage Improvement Project (ASIP) in the 1990s.

Funded by the World Bank, it aimed to modernise Accra's old sewer network.

However, it collapsed due to poor maintenance, funding and weak management by the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA).

The system had no sustainable revenue to operate long-term.

In the early 2000s, the Korle Lagoon Ecological Restoration Project (KLERP) attempted to clean the polluted Korle Lagoon.

It aimed to stop the indiscriminate dumping of faecal sludge at Lavender Hill.

Yet, without a faecal sludge treatment plant, the dumping continued.

The project failed to address the root problem.

Similar sanitation projects in Kumasi, backed by DANIDA and the African Development Bank, also collapsed.

They were plagued by land acquisition delays, poor coordination, and zero private sector participation. Most relied on unsustainable government subsidies.

These failures left Ghana vulnerable.

Without infrastructure for treating faecal sludge, the country faced rising disease outbreaks, environmental pollution, and a damaged public image.

Private sector interventions

By 2012, Accra’s sanitation crisis had become a national embarrassment.

Lavender Hill — a seafront dumping site — symbolised the failure of public sanitation management.

For decades, untreated faecal sludge from homes and public toilets was discharged directly into the sea at this site.

The environmental damage and health risks were enormous.
Government efforts had failed.

It took the bold intervention of the private sector to change the narrative.

Sewerage Systems Ghana Limited (SSGL), a subsidiary of the Jospong Group of Companies, stepped in with private capital and technical expertise.

SSGL constructed the Lavender Hill Faecal Sludge Treatment Plant — Ghana’s first modern facility of its kind.

Commissioned in 2016, the plant treats over 2,000 cubic metres of faecal sludge daily. This innovation ended decades of dumping waste into the sea.

SSGL’s intervention brought a professional, sustainable, and environmentally friendly solution.

It demonstrated the power of private sector leadership in solving public health challenges.

Beyond Lavender Hill, SSGL’s success inspired the construction of additional treatment plants across Ghana.

Global lessons

Sanitation projects cannot survive without sustainable funding.

That is the hard lesson Ghana learned from its past failures.

Government-led projects collapsed because they lacked the money to maintain operations.

Private investors, like SSGL, succeed because their projects are built on cost recovery and long-term financing models.

Globally, this is the standard.

A paper by Mundonde & Makoni, 2024 stated that in Zimbabwe, the government used PPPs to fund water and sanitation infrastructure.

Private investors were assured of returns through performance-based contracts and blended financing.Ghana’s approach to SSGL follows this tested global practice.

The Sanitation Performance Levy (SPL) is a critical part of this model.

It ensures that private operators such as SSGL can recover operational costs, maintain quality services, and reinvest in infrastructure.

Without sustainable financing, Ghana risks returning to its past — disease outbreaks, untreated waste, and failed projects.

Cost recovery is not a luxury. It is a necessity for protecting public health.

SSGL’s role in sanitation sector

The Jospong Group of Companies, through SSGL, is not a foreign contractor driven by short-term profit but a Ghanaian-grown enterprise that knows the local terrain, including the persistent challenge of limited public financing for critical infrastructure.

In a country where the government’s resources are often stretched across competing development needs, SSGL stepped in where others failed, investing private capital to build Ghana’s first modern faecal sludge treatment plant at Lavender Hill.

This was a bold move, not because it was lucrative, but because it was necessary for public health.

Far from being “free money,” the SPL is a performance-based mechanism — a globally accepted model that enables private companies to deliver essential public services in financially constrained environments.

SSGL often operates for months without government reimbursement, bearing financial risks that many international firms would avoid.

Yet, every day, their facilities treat over 2,000 cubic metres of waste, shielding Accra from the environmental degradation and deadly disease outbreaks that once defined the Lavender Hill narrative.

Therefore to frame the SPL as an unwarranted payout is to miss the bigger story — that SSGL represents what Ghanaian entrepreneurship should be: socially responsive, nationally aligned, and deeply invested in the long-term development of the country.

Public discourse must move beyond sensational commentary to embrace context, evidence, and appreciation of homegrown solutions that are building Ghana’s future under challenging economic conditions.

Sustainable sanitation

Since 2012, Sewerage Systems Ghana Limited (SSGL) has expanded beyond Accra to deliver modern waste treatment facilities across the country.

These investments reflect a bold private sector commitment to national development — creating jobs, protecting public health, and safeguarding the environment.

In Accra, SSGL replaced the infamous Lavender Hill dumping site with a modern treatment plant that processes 2,000 cubic metres of faecal sludge daily.

The Mudor Wastewater Treatment Plant, also in Accra, was rehabilitated and expanded to serve thousands of residents.

In Adjen Kotoku, SSGL constructed a septage treatment plant handling 1,500 cubic metres of liquid waste daily for northern Accra communities.

Further north, the Tamale Wastewater Treatment Plant, commissioned in 2023, treats 1,000 cubic metres daily.

It converts waste into reusable water and organic compost, supporting agriculture and creating over 1,000 jobs.

In the Western Region, the Takoradi Wastewater Treatment Plant treats another 1,000 cubic metres daily, helping to keep Sekondi-Takoradi clean and healthy.

These facilities are more than concrete and steel.

They represent a sustainable future for Ghana’s sanitation sector — led by private capital, guided by professional management, and supported by innovative financing such as the Sanitation Performance Levy.

Ghana’s urban future deserves nothing less.