On Tuesday, May 20, 2025, the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA), in coordination with the Korle Klottey Municipal Assembly, began yet another decongestion operation—this time targeting the heavily trafficked zones surrounding the AMA Head Office, from Kinbu Road to Railways, ECG Junction to the King Tackie Tawiah Statue, and Opera Square to Adabraka.
On Monday, May 19, AMA’s Public Relations Officer Gilbert Ankrah laid out the scope with precision, stating the operation will intensify along key routes from Wato Junction through the King Tackie Tawiah School to Cow Lane, including areas near the Accra City Hotel and the Mövenpick Hotel.
Ahead of the sweep, AMA Chief Executive Michael Kpakpo Allotey personally addressed hawkers in the Central Business District (CBD), pleading for cooperation and assuring them that the city’s upcoming 24-hour economy policy would create new trading opportunities.
“I am pleading with you to assist us in cleaning up the city and restoring order. We all want a better and more organised environment,” he said. “But for now, I plead that we stay off the pavement as we carry out this important cleanup.”
Yet his appeal, though earnest, echoes a familiar refrain in Accra’s history—a plea that resurfaces every few years as officials attempt to “beautify” or “sanitize” the city. For more than three decades, Accra’s downtown has been a theatre of conflict between city administrators and informal traders.
Under banners like “Operation No Hawking,” “Jubilee Cleanup,” or “Beautification,” the city has bulldozed kiosks, torched stalls, and chased street vendors off pavements, only to watch them return days, weeks, or months later.
The story of decongestion in Accra is not one of linear progress. It is a cautionary tale of cyclical enforcement, political symbolism, and unlearned lessons. And with the latest operation about to unfold, the question isn’t whether Accra can clear the streets—it’s whether it can break the cycle.
In the 1990s, under President Jerry Rawlings, the city forcibly relocated all street hawkers and uprooted the Yam Market, pushing traders into the then-peripheral Agbogbloshie slum. There was no support, no sanitation, and no plan—only removal. Unsurprisingly, the move backfired. Agbogbloshie quickly became Accra’s largest informal market, overcrowded and unregulated. Analysts now regard this period as a precedent-setter in failure: relocation without infrastructure created deepens urban problems than it solved.
By the 2000s, under President Kufuor’s New Patriotic Party (NPP), the AMA launched a new wave of decongestion drives. In 2005, Mayor Stanley Adjiri-Blankson began clearing hawkers from Makola, Oxford Street, and Tudu without any viable resettlement plan. The backlash was swift.
Traders returned, and the president himself rebuked the initiative, warning that such crackdowns were “vain and foolhardy.” Still, in 2007, AMA doubled down with the “Jubilee Cleanup,” which coincided with Ghana’s 50th independence celebrations.
This time, a new market—the Odawna Market at Kwame Nkrumah Circle—was ready, and about 4,000 traders were moved in. Yet even this more structured attempt faltered. Many vendors couldn’t afford stall licenses. Others found customer traffic lacking. Within months, hawkers were back on the sidewalks.
Then came 2009. With President Obama scheduled to visit Accra, the city launched another high-profile beautification campaign. Under cover of night, AMA forces bulldozed and burned roadside stalls. Streets were briefly cleared for the presidential motorcade, but the victory was short-lived.
Traders returned, and corruption allegations dogged the taskforces. Meanwhile, AMA escalated its approach: it formed a permanent Rapid Response Taskforce, staged raids through 2010, and passed bylaws in 2011 that made it illegal not just to sell, but to buy from hawkers. The result? Civil unrest.
The Trades Union Congress condemned the measures as “brutal” and “inhuman,” and even pedestrians—who often supported sidewalk clearance—began questioning the ethics and effectiveness of such tactics.
By 2013, under Mayor Oko Vanderpuije, the AMA was still chasing hawkers through Makola and Rawlings Park. Goods were confiscated, fines were levied, and arrests mounted. But enforcement, again, proved unsustainable. Traders pleaded for a transition period—“give us three months”—but few accommodations were made. Soon, the same vendors reoccupied their former spots, and the city’s sidewalks returned to business as usual.
In the 2020s, a new strategy emerged—pairing enforcement with infrastructure. In April 2021, AMA demolished over 600 informal shops at Rawlings Park in a sudden, unannounced raid. Traders, mostly women, were left destitute, and opposition leaders cried foul, suggesting the demolition had political undertones, given the park’s association with the late President Rawlings of the opposition NDC.
Again, without alternative facilities, the hawkers simply regrouped on adjacent pavements. But in July 2022, a more hopeful model surfaced: AMA commissioned a refurbished market shed at 31st Makola Street, offering 665 formal stalls. The project was well-received—though limited. Thousands of Makola traders still lacked space, and other markets, like Kantamanto, remained neglected. Still, the gesture hinted at a shift: from punitive policing to constructive capacity-building.
And yet, the core dilemma persists. Decongestion efforts in Accra have repeatedly failed for two main reasons: the absence of viable alternative spaces and the lack of meaningful stakeholder engagement. Time and again, traders are cleared from one area only to reappear in another, often worse, location.
Even when markets are built, poor infrastructure, sanitation, or customer access doom them to underuse. Policies are drafted without consulting those most affected. Enforcers extort fees, and crackdowns coincide suspiciously with political events or VIP visits. As one observer noted, “congested market areas… have higher profits that attract evicted traders back.” You can clear the space, but not the incentive.
This history should haunt the current campaign. If the AMA’s May 2025 operation is to break from the past, it cannot rely on force alone. The evidence is overwhelming: enforcement-only approaches lead to temporary gains at best and humanitarian crises at worst. Clearing pavements is not the same as creating opportunity. Chasing traders off the streets does not make them disappear; it only makes them invisible—until the cycle repeats.
Instead, Accra’s planners must embrace a more holistic model: one that combines market infrastructure, accessible financing, transport integration, sanitation services, and genuine dialogue with trader associations.
Urban order should not come at the cost of economic exclusion. Informal commerce is not the enemy of development—it is a fact of it. Cities that succeed in decongestion do not merely displace—they design, they engage, they invest.
And so, as the city embarks once again on another cleanup, it faces a choice: repeat the mistakes of the past or reimagine what decongestion can be. Not a war on hawkers. Not a performance for dignitaries. But a realignment of the city’s public space with the reality of its people’s needs. Because ultimately, Accra’s challenge is not to chase traders away. It’s to build a city where they no longer need to return.
