Floodwaters from Monday’s downpour submerged parts of Accra, leaving residents stranded and motorists abandoning their vehicles.

Several lives and properties were lost, with some people still missing.

One of the communities severely affected by the flooding was Tse Addo, a suburb of the La Dadekotopon Municipal Assembly. This was not an isolated misfortune but a problem that has persisted for decades, one rooted in the area’s history as a wetland that was never meant to be built on.

According to a social media user who grew up in the adjoining community of La, the area now known as Tse Addo was once farmlands crisscrossed by streams and bordered by the Kpeshie Lagoon and what was known as the African Lake.

Long before it became a residential enclave, it was referred to locally as “Tradefair Sɛɛ” — literally “behind the Trade Fair” — named after the now-demolished Ghana International Trade Fair building.

According to the user by name Sylvia Adjeley Konney, the land was waterlogged for much of the year, suited to crops rather than housing.

“As a child who grew up in La, I followed my grandfather a lot to his farm, he had an okro farm, tomato farm, maize and watermelon farms. The farmland had multiple streams, and the areas were mostly waterlogged,” she noted.

Over time, the farmlands were cleared and settlements sprang up, eventually taking the name Tse Addo after one of the first people believed to have moved there.

As the new community grew, the streams that once drained the area were filled in, and even parts of the Kpeshie Lagoon were reclaimed for development.

“Before we knew it, these farm areas were being cleared and some of our people from La moved to stay there, then the name Tse Addo came up (from what we were told it’s a name of one of the first few people who moved there “Addo”). The place became a whole new area on its own and our grandparents sold most part of it.

“Eventually, the beautiful streams got filled, a part of the African lake got filled, and the Kpeshie as well got filled,” she shared.

Is this account true?

This account aligns closely with what environmental and planning authorities have said about the area in recent years.

The Kpeshie Lagoon, which sits between the Whistler Barracks corridor and the La-Trade Fair corridor, has historically served as one of Accra’s natural flood-control systems — absorbing and gradually releasing stormwater that would otherwise overwhelm the city’s drains.

Studies have noted the lagoon’s deterioration due to pollution, illegal encroachment, and the loss of buffer zones meant to hold excess water.

In 2023, the then Works and Housing Minister, Francis Asenso-Boakye, named Tse Addo among several communities in Accra where unauthorised development had destroyed natural stormwater buffers, identifying it as a key contributor to recurring flooding in the area.

Actions taken by the government

In January 2026, the Greater Accra Regional Minister led a demolition exercise targeting illegal structures along the banks of the Kpeshie Lagoon, with NADMO officials explicitly citing flood prevention as the goal.

NADMO’s Director-General, Major (Rtd) Dr. Joseph Bikanyi Kuyon, has been blunt about the underlying cause of such flooding.

“Water is supposed to have its home. So, if you take the home of water and the rains come, where will it go? Flooding is because we have caused it,” he said to JoyNews after a related demolition exercise at Bush Road, also aimed at protecting the Kpeshie Lagoon.

The social media post also points to a structural problem beyond the choked waterways — absentee ownership.

Most of the housing built on reclaimed land, the post notes, was constructed by landlords who do not live there, renting the properties out to tenants while keeping their own families elsewhere. Some landlords, aware of the flood risk, have reportedly left the ground floors of their buildings vacant specifically to absorb floodwaters.

Monday’s flooding in Tse Addo only reflects a familiar and well-documented pattern in Accra’s flood story: a city that once relied on an interconnected network of wetlands, lagoons and floodplains to manage stormwater, only to have those natural systems built over piece by piece.

Researchers studying Accra’s flooding have noted that when such watercourses are blocked or narrowed, the water does not disappear, it simply finds another route, often through people’s homes.

For Tse Addo residents, with the lagoon, lake and streams that once absorbed this water now filled in and built upon, they will likely deal with floods whenever the rains are heavy, unless decisive enforcement action, including demolitions where necessary, is taken to restore the natural drainage the community was built over.

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