In the 2025 Mid-Year Budget Review, Finance Minister Dr Cassiel Ato Forson declared, “We aim to ensure that all the priority projects are completed and commissioned by the end of 2028.”
Number one on that list was the construction of a new bridge across the Volta River at Volivo.
The priority projects in question are ones for which funding had been secured but had neither been completed nor started before Ghana defaulted on the payments of its debts and began moves to restructure these debts in 2022.
“Mr Speaker, following Ghana’s default on its external debt service obligation on 19 December 2022, creditors halted disbursements of 55 bilateral projects. This resulted in several uncompleted projects scattered across the country and left a massive amount of US$3 billion in undisbursed loans,” Cassiel Ato Forson clarified in the Mid-Year Budget Review.
In the wake of an agreement being reached with its official creditors on debts owed, there was the need to decide the fate of these 55 bilateral projects.
Cassiel Ato Forson, in the Mid-Year Budget Review, disclosed that as part of the agreement, Ghana’s official creditors and the IMF agreed on an annual disbursement of $250 million to cater for these projects.
To avoid the situation where the $250million will be spread so thin it will make little impact on the projects, Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson revealed that government decided on and submitted a list of 24 projects that were to benefit from the first disbursement.
Top of the list was the construction of a new bridge over the Volta River known as the Volivo Bridge.
The Volivo Bridge is a transformational project that is eight years late.
In December 2016, the John Mahama administration entered into a loan agreement with the Japan International Cooperation Agency, JICA.
The agreement signed with the Japan International Cooperation Agency provided an ODA loan of up to 11.239 billion yen for the construction of a new bridge across the Volta River as part of the Eastern Corridor Project.
The money was to be used to construct a new cable-stayed bridge of approximately 520 metres in length, making it one of the longest cable-stayed bridges in West Africa.
“The bridge was to be constructed over the Volta River on the Eastern Corridor to connect the Port of Tema, the largest commercial port in Ghana, and the Burkina Faso border.”
“Ghana has prioritised development of three major corridors running from north to south in the country: the Eastern Corridor (Tema–Kulungugu border: 695 kilometres), the Western Corridor (Elubo–Hamile border: 778 kilometres) and the Central Corridor (Accra–Kumasi–Tamale–Paga border: 829 kilometres). Of those three corridors, the Eastern Corridor is the shortest route from the Port of Tema to the Burkina Faso border that does not pass through the urban area of Kumasi, the second largest city in Ghana where traffic congestion is severe.”
“As the Eastern Corridor has the potential for significantly reducing the freight transportation time from the Port of Tema to landlocked countries, it is an alternative to the chronically congested Central Corridor.”
“The current Adomi Bridge, which crosses the Volta River on the Eastern Corridor, was completed more than 50 years ago in 1956 and has become a hindrance to the flow of goods due to deterioration. By constructing a new cable-stayed bridge and providing an alternative route that bypasses the Adomi Bridge, it is expected that this project will strengthen the transportation capacity of the existing Eastern Corridor and stimulate the intra-regional economy,” a statement published on the JICA website after the loan agreement was signed said.
The statement further clarified, “Co-financing is planned with the African Development Bank, which will provide assistance for new road construction connecting the north and south (28.3 kilometres between the Asutsuare Junction and Volivo and 38.4 kilometres between Dufor-Adidome and the Asikuma Junction, a total of 66.7 kilometres).”
The Volivo Bridge, which at the time was to be funded with the loan from Japan, was to be completed by 2023.
Enter Nana Akufo-Addo
This loan was signed at a time when President John Mahama was seeking a second term in line with Ghana’s constitutional arrangement.
He faced off with an old foe, a man he served with in Parliament and had many media encounters with, Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo.
The two had faced off in 2012 after President Mahama replaced his boss, President John Evans Atta Mills, as the presidential candidate of the National Democratic Congress after the latter passed on.
After a bitterly contested election, Nana Akufo-Addo won the contest and served as Ghana’s President from 2017.
Having taken over as President, the execution of the Volivo Bridge project, like many others, became the responsibility of his government.
In the case of the Volivo Bridge, the funding was available. What was required was for the government to construct the bridge.
Eight years down the lane, President John Mahama returned to the office of President to find the project at the same phase he had left it.
Paying for the delays
There is always a price for delay.
Like the servant who buried his talents, President Akufo-Addo handed over to President John Mahama exactly what he had inherited: funding untouched, project not executed.
However, there is one challenge. Construction delays add up to the cost of the project.
Will the Japanese be ready to increase the loan amount in line with the increased cost of the project?
Is the loan still available, or will the Japanese still advance the loan to the people of Ghana to use to execute such a crucial project?
After some rounds of negotiation, President John Mahama and his chosen Foreign Affairs Minister, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, shook hands with the Japanese.
An agreement had been struck. Its details reveal the stark cost of abandoning the very concept of governance. Governance is a continuum. In the case of the Volivo Bridge, President Akufo-Addo should have no reason not to have executed the strategic project. The loan was available and it was never utilized when required.
The Japanese are people of their word, and by their word they stuck. They agreed to give us the same amount agreed in 2016, not a single yen more.
However, the Japanese government, represented by JICA, wanted an assurance that their Ghanaian counterpart could find money to pay for the difference created by the unjustifiable delays.
That assurance came in the form of President John Dramani Mahama’s flagship Big Push policy, under which the government plans to dedicate billions of cedis to major road projects. The main source of funds for the policy will be monies from oil revenues dedicated annually to funding the Government of Ghana’s budget, or the Annual Budget Funding Amount, ABFA.
So when hands shook and faces lined up for photo opportunities, both parties were convinced that the Volivo Bridge project could finally be actualized with funding from the people of Japan and the people of Ghana.
A relieved Okudzeto Ablakwa
Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, Minister for Foreign Affairs and the foreign policy vanguard of the government, sat in these meetings and posed for the pictures.
He sat in these meetings as Foreign Affairs Minister but with the heart and head of the Member of Parliament for North Tongu. This bridge will connect one part of his constituency to another.
In opposition, he piled question after question, seeking answers about when such a strategic project would be executed, knowing very well that the government he served in had done the heavy lifting of securing the money needed to pay for the project. Question after question was answered with empty assurances.
Perhaps it was his constituency, or the fact that Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa was the MP. These are lingering questions that may never be answered. Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa is no pushover, but in President Akufo-Addo and his cousin, the Road Minister Kwesi Amoako Atta, he found men whose self-interest defined national interest. They gave what might be described as programmed answers. They repeated words that held no true meaning, and they did this for eight years.
This time, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa must have answers not only to his own questions but to those of worried constituents.
Perhaps MP Ablakwa’s faith will be strengthened by how proudly President John Mahama mentioned it when he met the leaders of the Ghanaian community in Tokyo. It was clear from his smile when he spoke about the fact that Ghana had managed to convince Japan to advance the loan for the Volivo Bridge.
A crucial step, but President John Mahama and his Foreign Affairs Minister, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, know that the real test is the next step, the step that President Akufo-Addo never bothered to initiate in North Tongu.
The Volivo Bridge must be constructed!!!
Written by: Sena Nombo, Current Affairs Host at Radio Gold
