County and town planning authority 

Notes made in the meeting with the Accra main masterplanning authority. I met with three young planners two of whom studied in the UK and one in the Netherlands.
There is a 3-tier system in place: 1) strategy for the wider region, 2) area (land use) masterplan and 3) parcel-to-parcel zoning at the more detailed end.

For the greater Accra region, the masterplan developed in the early 90s was not implemented and current developments adhere to no single strategy. When a developer and a Stool (see earlier post) agree on a deal, the local assembly normally gives a planning permission (if a comprehensive scheme is presented). This means there is no coherent control on where developments emerge and what use they fulfill. The resulting piecemeal dispersed development is difficult and expensive to supply with a good uniform level of road access, transportation, telecommunications, sanitation and other infrastructure normally provided by the government.

These are similar to the issues Lindsay Sawyer identified in certain parts of mainland Lagos in her essay Lagos: a Plotted City – Revisited (2016) and other works.
There are two strategies being considered to address the population growth which causes the road congestion. First, the ongoing transport report includes proposals for new rail and other types of transport. On the other hand the recent land use and spatial planning act previews potential decentralisation of the office uses, however the officials i met disagree with this initiative because there is sufficient space in central Accra for more office developments. A recent decentralisation case is the Airport City, where a phase 2 is previewed.
Most of the issues arise through lack of implementation (whilst much is planned) and some of the problems are due to individual developer driven construction by agreement with chiefs, without an overall cohesive strategy. This is partly due to land being owned and to a large extent managed by the indigenous Stools. Ghana’s first president Kwame Nkrumah wanted to nationalise the country land but only succeeded to a small extend. No president has done more ever since, however the aforementioned Land Use and Spatial Planning Act might bring development a step towards being more state controlled.