Developing a Participatory Urban Governance Model to Improve Flood Resilience in Informal Settlements in Accra

Jessica Ports Robbins

April 9, 2026

• Josephine Agbeko, Michigan Technological University
• Daniel Shtob, Michigan Technological University

Summary:

In part due to dire flood risk projections in Accra, Ghana’s capital and largest city, government leaders and communities have increasingly focused on adaptive and resilience-building strategies. The need for effective flood planning and response is nowhere greater than in the city’s sprawling informal settlements, which are largely unplanned, face socio-economic challenges, and often are found on low-lying, marginal land at serious risk of flooding. Unfortunately, the dominant mode of response centers on technological and infrastructural solutions and largely omits community-engaged, participatory planning and governance, often to the detriment of project efficacy. Because community participation has long been recognized as an integral and beneficial component of socio-environmental planning, to better understand benefits and challenges in implementation in these communities, we employ 40 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with municipal leaders, community leaders, and community members from four at-risk informal settlements, coupled with media, documentary, and observational review. Our findings highlight seven thematic elements that contribute to the present lack of local participatory governance systems, each of which suggests ways to overcome these barriers in the future. Combining these findings with insights from the participatory literature and ongoing efforts to instill a participatory ethos in other aspects of Ghanaian life, we develop a set of guiding principles and a framework to instill community participation that may be used by informal settlement communities as well as planning and response professionals who serve them.