An urban planner assesses the damaging impact of flooding and erosion on a poor migrant community in Kumasi, Ghana

by Aldrin B. Plaza

The country of Ghana in West Africa is susceptible to different kinds of disasters including plague and disease outbreak and floods caused by excessive rains. In 2007, the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent reported the death of twenty-two persons and the displacement of 200,000 more individuals most of whom are farmers due to torrential rains which lasted for three weeks in the Upper East Region of Ghana. The City of Kumasi, Ghana’s second largest city located in the Ashanti Region, and its peri-urban areas are not spared from the devastating effects of these floods.

In Kumasi the growth of peri-urban communities depends very much on their proximity to the city center and also to their adjoining areas and the activities therein. The city is almost at the center of Ghana and is traversed by a number  of major road networks making it susceptible to migration. For the City of Kumasi, a peri-urban interface area is defined as places “with presence of bush/fallow agricultural land, but with competition for land from non-agricultural uses” and is determined as areas from 4 to 47 km from the center of Kumasi (Brook and Davilla, 2000). One of these peri-urban villages in Kumasi is the community of Ayigya, a suburb of Kumasi under the Ofirokorm sub-metro located about 5 km from the Kumasi City center. This study focused on the areas located in the Old Ayigya – Ayigya Zongo and Ayigya Ahimbono.

Ayigya started as an area occupied by about ten families in the 1950s. When migrants from the north of Ghana seeking a better life started to look for areas where they could build settlements, the then Chief of Ayigya allowed them to settle on the other side of their hill settlement. This place is what is now referred to as Ayigya Zongo which literally means “migrant’s village”. In Ghana, all lands are under the stewardship (and ownership) of the Chiefs and other such traditional rulers (in the case of the Ashanti Region where Kumasi is situated, all lands are owned by the Ashanti King). So all matters pertaining to land use and allocation would first have to get the approval of the Chief, and if given approval, a lease certificate of 99 years is given to the individual or entity (50 years if the individual or entity is a foreigner or foreign-owned).

Almost all of the settlers in Ayigya Zongo are Muslims while the original settlers in the Ayigya Ahimbono area follow a traditional religion where priests also play a role in the village’s traditional and political affairs along with the Chief. A shrine built by the original settlers located on the topmost portion of Ayigya still exists to this day. This shrine, as stated by the traditional priests, serves as the home of the souls of their ancestors. It is situated on a high area because they believe that their ancestors will continue to watch over them from the shrine. At present, Ayigya Ahimbono’s population has a large number of Christians due to the influx of renters in the area. Although the Town and Country Planning Department (TCPD) made plans in 1967 and 1978 to develop the suburb community of Ayigya, its development was dictated by the traditional rulers (the Chiefs) and the demand for low-cost rental housing for the employees and also students of the Kwameh Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST). Basic infrastructure services such as water supply and drainage are lacking and the buildings are made up of only a few multiple storey buildings, with most buildings being single-storey compound houses which are rented out to multiple tenants. These compound houses have an average occupancy of about 12 families.
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