Ghana’s Transport Crisis (2026): Why “Buying More Buses” Never Fixes the Terminal Queues

If you have stepped into the Kwame Nkrumah Circle, Madina, or Kaneshie terminals in the last few weeks, you’ve seen the same sight: hundreds of stranded passengers, long winding queues that don’t seem to move, and a palpable sense of desperation.

In the middle of January 2026, Ghana is gripped by an acute transport crisis. Commuters are facing "artificial scarcity" as "trotro" drivers hoard vehicles to force unapproved fare hikes, and the state, the one entity supposed to provide a "buffer", is nowhere to be found.

To understand why your commute is so difficult today, we have to look back at nearly a century of  Public Transport Procurement.  As illustrated, Ghana has a history of buying shiny new buses while neglecting the systems that keep them running.

1927: The Dawn of Organized Transit

The story of organized transit in Ghana began in 1927. The British colonial government, seeking to modernize the Gold Coast, brought in the first formal buses to Accra. These were punctual, and strictly for people.

There was just one problem: Moving goods.

Ghanaian commerce has always been built on the backs of market women moving goods. These British buses had no room for the headpans, crates, or bags of produce that fueled the local economy. Traders found the formal buses useless.

In an act of classic Ghanaian entrepreneurship, private operators stepped in with "Bone-shaker" trucks, wooden-seated vehicles that carried everything: people, goats, and yams. This "carry-anything" service was the birth of the informal sector we now call the Tro-tro. 

The 1960s to 80s: The Rise and Fall of Giants

After independence, the state tried to regain control of the roads through massive infrastructure and vehicle investments. Three names dominated this era: STC ,OSA and CES.

• STC : Launched in 1965, the State Transport Corporation was designed for long-distance travel. It was once the gold standard of West African transit. However, by the late 1990s, decades of debt and mismanagement led to a failed privatization attempt in 2000. To prevent a total shutdown, SSNIT took an 80% stake in 2002. Today, STC survives as a "landlord": it owns fewer than 40 buses but rents its brand and terminal space to private owners for a commission.

• OSA: Created in 1969 to centralize city travel, the Omnibus Services Authority once operated over 500 heavy-duty buses bought via state loans. But the "Procurement Trap" was already set. Without a budget for specialized spare parts, the fleet slowly became a graveyard. In 2002, creditors finally had enough and auctioned off the remaining fleet to recover unpaid fuel debts.

• CES: Established in 1981 as a department within the Ministry of Transport and Communications, the City Express Service (CES) was intended to augment urban transit. It suffered from severe operational inefficiencies and recorded a net cross-debt loss of 21,000 cedi by late 1991. Like the OSA, the CES could not compete with the informal sector and was eventually privatized in 2000.

  
  

2002: The turning point When OSA died in 2002, the GPRTU (the Tro-tro unions) took over the state terminals. The state effectively handed the physical keys of the city to the informal sector, losing its power to regulate fares.

2003 – 2016: The Era of "Pro-Poor" Politics and A BRT Dream

In 2003, the Metro Mass Transit (MMT), popularly known as the "Kufuor Bus", was launched with much fanfare. Its goal was noble: provide free rides for school children and a "buffer" against fare hikes by the private unions.

But history repeated itself. We bought the buses from various countries (China, India, etc.), but we didn't build the specialized workshops. Over the years, more than 700 Metro Mass buses were sold as scrap across various administrations. Currently, the nationwide operational fleet has collapsed from over a thousand to just 134 buses.

Then came Aayalolo in 2016. It promised a "Smart" Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) experience with Wi-Fi and digital "Tap-and-Go" cards. But the "Procurement-first" mindset failed again. There were no dedicated lanes, meaning the high-tech buses got stuck in the same traffic as the Tro-tros. Today, dozens of these expensive Scania buses sit rotting in the Achimota and Kaneshie depots because the state cannot afford the specialized European parts or the software licenses needed to repair them.

2024 – 2026: The Electric Promise Meets the Software Wall

In 2024, the government pivoted to the latest trend: Smart Transit. The goal was to commission 100 electric buses to "decouple" transport fares from rising global oil prices.

As of mid-January 2026, the results are disheartening. 10 buses were delivered for piloting. Of those 10, only four are actually moving. The rest are grounded not by broken engines, but by faulty charging software and a lack of local technicians who understand the digital architecture of the vehicles. It is the "Aayalolo problem" but with batteries.

The Bottom Line: Why are you stranded today?

The "Transport Chaos" of 2026 is not an accident; it is the logical conclusion of 100 years of policy failure.

When the state system (Metro Mass, Aayalolo, STC) is broken, the government has no "buffer." They cannot deploy extra buses to break the artificial scarcity created by private drivers. They cannot offer cheaper alternatives to force private fares down.

The Lesson: Periodically, we buy a new fleet of buses and hold a commissioning ceremony. But until Ghana stops focusing on the "procurement" of vehicles and starts focusing on the "maintenance" of systems: the workshops, the dedicated lanes, and the technical training, the queues at our terminals will only get longer.