Ghana airport a white elephant?

Although Ghana’s aviation industry is one of the fastest growing in West Africa – average annual growth of 10% in international passengers, 30% domestic, and as much as 15% in cargo – the country is spending rather exorbitant amounts on building new and upgrading current airports. And at least one of these projects has been condemned as being a waste of time and money. That project is the upgrading of Tamale airport to international standards – on which construction work is due to start soon, according to Pedro Alves, project engineer of Queiroz Galvao Contracting Company. The first phase of the Tamale International Airport project is the extension of the runway from the current 2 480m to 3 940m, and includes the installation of a complete lighting system to accommodate bigger aircraft. The project is expected to be completed in September 2015. But as business and financial analyst, Prosper Kwesi Acquah, wrote in Modern Ghana: “We have our priorities messed up and one tends to wonder what type of thinking goes into such decision- making processes. “The three northern regions are the most sparsely populated regions of the country, and are among the poorest in the country. “In my humble opinion building an international airport in Tamale is a waste of the country’s resources, injecting over R1.8 billion into an airport that will become a white elephant upon completion.” The construction of a new perishable cargo centre also seems to be money spent unwisely. Exports of fresh fruit account for only 1% of total Ghanaian exports, according to Anthony Pile, CEO of Blue Skies Ghana. The rather pointless nature of this project is exacerbated by the fact that the government also has plans to build a new international airport in the Greater Accra region – also the location of Kotoka International Airport, the country’s only international airport up to now. The new airport will be constructed by China Airport Civil Construction (CACC), which was contracted in September 2012 and has already submitted its feasibility study findings and preliminary design to the minister of transport, Dzifa Attivor. She has also, in turn, submitted these to the Chinese financial institutions for possible funding – for a project cost that has not yet been made public but could be expected to run into billions of rands. According to the CACC plans – based on a proposed annual passenger throughput of 4.5 million – the airport development will include 13 passenger aprons; a terminal area of 45 000 sqm; cargo throughput of 30 000 tonnes; a cargo warehouse area of 7 000sqm; and a car park area of 42 000sqm. Meanwhile, the Ghana Airports Company Limited (GACL) has continued its rehabilitation of the Kotoka International Airport under the phase III project – estimated by the Ghanaian press at about R1.07bn. But again this may be good money tossed after bad, as the ministry of transport envisages that the new airport will serve as an international airport while the Kotoka airport will be used as domestic airport in the future.