Infrastructure for Urban Housing in “Ghana Housing Profile”

Abstract

As with many cities in the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, there are two distinctly different urban infrastructure levels within a Ghanaian city. There is a well serviced area in which most of the occupants are rich, and this is usually quite a small proportion of the built up area. Alongside it, and often wrapping all around it, is a relatively unserviced city, occupied by all income groups but within which the poor are concentrated. In most newly developing areas of Accra, Kumasi and other Ghanaian towns, servicing lags behind building development. Ghanaian cities are unusual in Sub-Saharan Africa, however, in their reliance on public toilet facilities which were outlawed in countries of southern Africa more than half a century ago. Not only are public toilets still in use in Ghana but standards are still being made for them, albeit under the guise of somewhere for people to go when out around town rather than their toilet of first resort daily. Generally, because of communal life in Ghana’s dwellings, most households share water supply and toilets with several others. Very few have exclusive use of all services