Project interventions and slum improvement in Ghanaian Cities: A case study of Kumasi Metropolitan Area.

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Date
2010-07-14
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Abstract
Rapid urbanization in Africa comes with myriad of problems including slum growth. Factors such as rural-urban migration, and weak institutional and regulatory framework in the management of land in the cities are some of the causes of slum growth. The proliferation of slums changes not only the urban form and structure, but it also exacerbates poverty, housing problems, inequality and social exclusion in the cities. This poses socio-economic and developmental challenges to the management of the city, and this is the problem which the study investigated taking Kumasi as a case study. The study was guided by the following objectives; the examination of the socio–economic and spatial structure of slums and the assessment of the efforts being made towards slum control and urban growth management. The study further sought to examine the challenges associated with slum control efforts and based on the challenges, recommendations were made towards slum control and urban planning and management. A case study method was adopted in which the Kumasi metropolis was chosen to facilitate the ease of data collection. Respondents were selected through a simple random sampling technique to gather household data using structured questionnaires from four purposively sampled slum communities of Asawase, Aboabo, Oforikrom and Anloga all in the Kumasi metropolis. Institutional survey involving the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA), Ghana Water Company, Electricity Company of Ghana, the Department of Urban Roads, among others was also done. The study identified that slum dwellers are mainly rural-urban migrants, and it was thus revealed that 50.9 percent of them are females. The informal sector employs about 71 percent of the slum dwellers and that 60 percent of the people employed in this sector are poor due to low earnings. Only 11 percent of the sampled population have any form of a tertiary education. Recommendations were made to help resolve the challenges posed by slum growth. Some of these include the need for KMA to reduce her overreliance on the external sources of funding for slum control projects to make them successful, squatting on marshy areas and other unauthorized locations should be made a punishable offence and the house-to-house waste collection in the slum communities should be intensified to help address the worsening sanitation problem in the slum.
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A thesis submitted to the School of Graduate Studies, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Development Policy and Planning.
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