Transportation Project

$143,104,000Original Compact Project Amount
$227,710,512Total Disbursed

Estimated Benefits

Estimated benefits correspond to $134.5 million of project funds, where cost-benefit analysis was conducted. That corresponds to the original compact amount for the Project, with funds used for M&E and administration activities removed.

Estimated Benefits for Activities
Activity	Time	Estimated Economic Rate of Return (ERR) over 20 years	Estimated beneficiaries over 20 years	Estimated net benefits over 20 years
Ferry Activity	At the time of signing	N/A	5,464	N/A
N1 Highway Activity	At the time of signing	36 percent	216,584	$232,900,000
N1 Highway Activity	At compact closure	32.7 percent	216,584	$313,400,000
Trunk Roads Activity	At the time of signing	17 percent	92,321	N/A

ERRs for the Ferry and Trunk Roads Activities will be updated as part of investment evaluations.

Project Description

Farmers in Ghana face high transportation costs when moving their goods to market – a trip that is almost always made on Ghana’s 60,000 km national road network. The Transportation Project, which supported the Government’s long-term Road Sector Development Program, was designed to promote access to social services and support expansion of Ghana’s export-directed horticulture base by reducing the cost of getting agricultural products to market. The project included three activities:

N1 Highway Activity

This major public works project significantly upgraded a 14 km stretch of highway between two major junctions outside of the capital of Accra in order to reduce the bottleneck in accessing the International Airport and the city’s primary shipping port. The activity supported an expansion of Ghana’s export-directed horticulture base.
Ferry Activity

The Ferry Activity was funded in order to facilitate growth of the agricultural sector in the Afram Basin Zone by improving the ferry service of Volta Lake Transport Company that connects Adawso on the southern shore to Ekye Amanfrom on the northern shore. The compact provided for the construction of two roll-on/roll-off ferries, two ferry terminals, two landing stages, and the rehabilitation of the floating dock at Akosombo Port.
Trunk Roads Activity

This activity was included to facilitate the growth of agriculture and access to social services by improving up to 230 km of trunk roads, important major routes used for long-distance travel. Feasibility studies, designs and preparation of bidding documents were carried out on 243.71 km of roads. As a result of funding constraints, only 75.21 km were improved under the compact, with the remaining 168.5 km falling to the responsibility of the Government of Ghana to finish upon availability of funding.

At compact end, the project redesigned and funded construction of a key 14 km section of the N1 Highway, the major urban highway connecting horticulture production areas to the west of Accra through the city to a deep-water sea-freight port in Tema; rebuilt or upgraded 75 km of trunk roads throughout the compact intervention zones; and upgraded ferry services on Lake Volta to facilitate growth of the agricultural sector in the Afram Basin Zone.

The rehabilitation and construction of a critical section of the N1 Highway was one of the most significant infrastructure projects in the country. Handling up to 30,000 vehicles per day, this stretch of the N1—a two-lane undivided road—was often congested and lacked the operational capacity required to serve such high volumes of national, transnational and local traffic. Following the completion of the compact, the highway was transformed into a six-lane, divided road with four overpasses, one elevated circle interchange, street lighting, drainage, bus stops, extra-wide sidewalks with graded ramps, pedestrian walkovers, and stoplights at all major intersections. The new highway reduced peak travel time from one hour to less than 20 minutes on the new 14 km stretch and increased average daily traffic from about 27,000 vehicles per day to over 51,000.

While the project activities were largely complete at the end of the compact, the Government of Ghana funded and supervised completion of some outstanding works following compact closure, including the construction of two landing docks, one ferry, and a floating dock.

Evaluation Findings