The Vice President of IMANI Africa, Bright Simons, has laid bare a damning assessment of successive Ghanaian governments’ management of the Saglemi Housing project, calling it a prime example of what he describes as a “katanomic” system.
According to Simons, “katanomics” defines a society where political intentions and policy execution are so disconnected that leadership decisions appear incoherent.
“Recent events led me to subject some recent decisions by Ghana’s Attorney General to discontinue cases started by the previous government to this theory. Saglemi Housing Estate being one such case”
Bright Simons, Vice President of IMANI Africa
In a detailed analysis, Simons linked the Saglemi debacle to a broader failure in policy cohesion and accountability.
He raised serious questions about the recent decision by the Attorney General under President John Dramani Mahama’s administration to discontinue prosecutions related to the housing project – decisions which, according to him, may further undermine Ghana’s position in an ongoing international arbitration case.
The origins of the crisis date back to 2012-2013, when the government of Ghana secured a $200 million loan from Credit Suisse at a 12.5% interest rate to support affordable housing.
Of this, about $180 million was transferred to Construtora OAS, a Brazilian firm contracted to build 5,000 affordable housing units. However, Simons noted that only 1,506 units were constructed – and none were habitable.
“No plans to connect electricity and water, or build drainage had been made. The designs had been imported wholesale and had to be amended leading to massive cost variation”
Bright Simons, Vice President of IMANI Africa
He calculated that an additional $115 million would be required to make the existing structures livable, raising the average cost per unit to about $200,000 – an irony, he noted, for a project aimed at affordability.
“Affordable indeed,” he stated dryly. Meanwhile, the original 12.5% interest on the loan continued to accumulate, compounding the financial disaster.
Changing Governments, Unchanging Policies
Simons highlighted the absence of consistent housing policy across three administrations. When a new government assumed power in 2017, it failed to present a new policy direction.
By February 2019, the Ghanaian subsidiary of Construtora OAS terminated its contract and sought compensation from the state. The government responded by prosecuting two former ministers and a senior bureaucrat involved in amending the contract, as well as two businessmen linked to Construtora.
“The main reasons are that the contractual amendments were illegal and led to a financial loss because the country got 30% of the houses it paid for”
Bright Simons, Vice President of IMANI Africa
President Mahama’s return to power in 2025 introduced new complications. His administration inherited both the prosecutions and a public-private partnership aimed at reviving the housing estate.
Within two months, the Attorney General discontinued the prosecutions, asserting they were ill-conceived – a move Simons described as suspect given that two of the accused ministers were now part of the ruling party.
The government’s decision to drop the cases may now backfire. A few months later, Construtora OAS initiated arbitration proceedings in Paris under International Chamber of Commerce rules, demanding $10 million in lost profits and compensation claims potentially reaching $180 million.
“The government of Ghana now finds itself in a serious bind,” Simons wrote.
“Just 3 months before, it had insisted that the prosecutions of the Construtora affiliates were improper. But now it has to go to Paris and make the exact same arguments that it just dropped in the local courts”
Bright Simons, Vice President of IMANI Africa
He drew attention to extracts from the government’s arbitration submission, which accuse Construtora of cheating Ghana, violating contract terms, and delivering substandard, uninhabitable buildings.
“That everything about Saglemi was a mess,” he stressed, and that Ghana is owed $114 million by the Brazilian firm.
Citizens Must Organise
Simons questioned whether any arbitrator would trust a government that publicly abandoned its domestic legal case only to repeat the same arguments internationally.
He attributed these contradictions to a political culture where strong citizen-led policy oversight is absent, and decisions are guided by expediency rather than coherent policy frameworks.
“Would these outcomes occur if the government’s political decision-making was being driven by consistent policies?
“Policies that had strong citizen constituencies and the scrutiny of a critical mass of those citizens?”
Bright Simons, Vice President of IMANI Africa
He concluded with a call for civic action, lamenting that under current conditions, no genuinely objective policy-conscious citizens would be allowed anywhere near serious decision-making.
“Only we the citizens working together as organised groups can change that.” He charged.
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