Sometime in our lifetime (we need to build a new capital city in Ghana)

Yes! Accra is great but we all know it’s not perfect. It was the seat of the government when we took over from the British Colonial Government in 1957. So technically we can all agree we didn’t have much to do with its planning. Close your eyes for a minute and just assume the last 50 plus years of self determination (albeit painfully nonexistent for long stretches of time) didn’t happen.

It’s time to build a new capital city! A city by us and for us the way we want to live. Let it be a statement of our independence. We need to show the world that if we had control over our affair (which we do now) this is how things would be.

It will be great if we could gather a committee that includes all the political parties NDC, NPP, CPP, PNC, PHP, Architectures, Town Planners, Engineers, Entrepreneurs, Doctors, Teachers, Bankers, Lawyers, Market Women, Construction workers, School Children, Retirees, Farmers etc to design and build a new city.

Of course it will be expensive and it will require building a new international airport and all the things that come with a capital city. The time for small thinking should be over by now.

Here’s what I’d like to see in our new capital:

• Designed and built by the best of our engineers and town planners
• Priority to qualified Ghanaian owned businesses and subcontractors as much as possible
• Home Addresses
• Post office mail with home delivery (if we still have snail mail by then)
• Central drainage and sewage system
• Covered gutters
• Water, Electricity, and Gas on demand
• No abandoned uncompleted buildings
• Industrial Area with 24/7 electricity connected to the grid and backup (ancillary service)
• Major hospital with free quarterly medical checkup for resident tax payers
• Major tolled road from Accra with rest stops and ambulance stations and police patrol
• Street Lights
• Parks, Tennis Courts, Running tracks, Picnic and Recreational areas
• Public Library (hopefully we won’t need a huge building because Google would have scanned every book ever written by then)
• Speed Limits and police issuing speeding tickets
• Garbage collection service
• Discourage Plastic Water Bottles and sachet water
• Major irrigated commercial farms outside the city limits that grow as many of the our foods as possible
• All bulbs will be energy efficient by law
• Tailors and seamstresses who are licensed by a board and can make most of the suits and cloths we import.
• Multi-use buildings
• 21st Century open air African market with bargaining as we like it
• Heavy dependence on light rail and sustainable public transport
• Tax private vehicles by tolling most roads
• University of Ghana (NewCapital Campus) that pays 100% tuition and is only subsided for governments employees and their families