Two Billion in the Bank. Where Is the Farmers’ Compensation? The Accra–Kumasi Expressway
Commentary · Roads · Accra–Kumasi Expressway · 23 October 2026
Two Billion in the Bank. Where Is the Farmers' Compensation?
The money for the road is in the bank. The corridor is cleared. The President is coming back before Christmas to cut the sod. Only one group of people is still waiting: the farmers and families whose land, homes, cocoa and oil palms were bulldozed to make way for it.
The money: ready and waiting
On 14 September 2026, at Kwaso near Ejisu, the Ghana Armed Forces handed the cleared right of way for the new Accra–Kumasi Expressway over to the government. President Mahama used the occasion to announce that US$2 billion was already sitting in a special account at the Bank of Ghana, and that the money had not been borrowed. He promised that contractors would be paid promptly, with every certificate settled "instantly", and that he would return to Kwaso before Christmas to cut the sod.
He also thanked the chiefs, farmers and residents along the corridor who had surrendered their land and crops for the project.
Contractors will be paid instantly. The farmers have been thanked. Thanks are not compensation.
The land: wider than planned
The new expressway runs about 199 kilometres, from Ablekuma in Accra through Adeiso, Asamankese, Akim Oda, Ayirebi, Ofoase, Enyiresi, Gyadamwa, Achiase and Kwaso, to Sawua near the Lake Bosomtwe road in Ashanti. Most of it will be a six-lane dual carriageway.
To make room for it, soldiers of the 48 Engineers Regiment cleared a corridor through farms, villages and plantations. Buildings, oil palm plantations, cocoa farms and food crops were all marked for destruction.
And the corridor grew. According to the military engineers themselves, the road was first designed to be 120 metres wide and was later widened to 150 metres, which brought more farmers into its path.
What a cocoa farm is
A cocoa farm is not a field of crops that grows back next season. A cocoa tree takes years to bear. For many families along the corridor, the farm was their pension, their children's school fees and their inheritance, all in one. Once the bulldozer has been through, that income is gone until someone pays for it.
The promise: June 2026
In the spring, the military contractors assured affected communities that the government would pay adequate compensation to everyone whose property was destroyed. Teams from the Land Valuation Board and the Ghana Highway Authority would come to assess the farms and buildings not yet valued.
When aggrieved farmers asked when they would be paid for the crops that were their only livelihood, an official from the Ghana Highway Authority's head office gave a date: June 2026.
June came and went. In September, reports from the corridor still carried the same message: farmers pleading for their compensation. The government, for its part, says compensation payments are already being made.
If payments are being made, the public deserves to know: to whom, how much, and when the rest will be paid.
An old pattern on the same road
None of this is new on the Accra–Kumasi route.
In November 2012, landowners affected by the construction of the existing Accra–Kumasi highway blocked the road at Suhum, dressed in red, protesting compensation they said was four years overdue. Years later, landowners at Kwafokrom–Apedwa announced they would block the highway again, after five years without payment for the land the road was built on.
The pattern is always the same: the land is taken first, the road is built, and the people who gave the land are left to fight for years to be paid for it.
This week, videos circulating on social media claim that residents along the new corridor have blocked work in protest. We have not been able to verify these videos independently. But if they are real, nobody should be surprised.
The corridor today: cleared, and already being dug up
The cleared corridor is not sitting quietly either. On 14 October, National Security arrested fifteen people for illegal sand winning on the newly cleared right of way in the Sewua–Donyina–Appiadu area of Ashanti, and impounded six trucks and a wheel loader. According to the district chief executive, an opinion leader had handed the land over to the sand winners.
The state was fast to protect the corridor from sand winners. It has been far slower to pay the people the corridor was taken from.
Five questions that need answers before the sod is cut
- How many households, farms and buildings along the corridor are entitled to compensation?
- How many have been fully paid so far, and how many partly or not at all?
- What is the total compensation bill, and is it part of the US$2 billion, or separate from it?
- Who decides the value of a destroyed cocoa farm, and can farmers see and contest their valuation?
- Will everyone be paid before the sod is cut, or will the ceremony go ahead while families are still waiting?
These are not political questions. They are questions any landowner, anywhere in the world, would ask.
My view
I am not against the road. Anyone who has sat for seven hours in traffic between Accra and Kumasi, or seen the crashes on the old highway, knows Ghana needs it.
But a state that can find two billion dollars for concrete and tar, and promise contractors instant payment, cannot tell a cocoa farmer to keep waiting. That is not a shortage of money. It is a question of who matters.
An ever-expanding state that takes first and pays later, if at all, is not building the nation. It is borrowing from its poorest citizens without asking, and without paying interest. Arrogance is assuming they will wait. Ignorance is not seeing what that waiting costs them.
Pay the farmers first. Then cut the sod. In that order.
Connected reading
Explore Kumasi and the Ashanti Region
Kumasi, Manhyia Palace, Lake Bosomtwe, kente villages and the Asante heritage, with local guides. Entrance fees are included in the tour price; tips are not included but always welcome.
Sources
- Graphic Online, 14 September 2026: President Mahama at Kwaso on the US$2 billion, contractor payments and the sod cutting before Christmas.
- Graphic Online, spring 2026: military contractors on compensation, the widening from 120 to 150 metres, and the June 2026 payment date.
- 3News, September 2026: the expressway route and farmers pleading for compensation.
- Information Services Department: government statement that compensation payments are being made.
- Citi Newsroom and Ghanaian Times, 15 October 2026: arrests for illegal sand winning on the corridor.
- MyJoyOnline: landowners' protests over unpaid compensation on the existing Accra–Kumasi highway at Suhum (2012) and Kwafokrom–Apedwa.
Commentary by Remo Kurka. Fact-checked: 23 October 2026. The opinions in the section "My view" are the author's own. Social-media claims of a blockade could not be independently verified at the time of writing. ghanaweb-news.com carries no Google advertising.