Integrated urban governance of COVID-19 interventions in Ghanaian cities: insight from marketplaces in Accra and Kumasi

Abstract

ABSTRACT It is argued that cities require a specific mode of urban governance to provide an effective response to pandemics and disease outbreaks. This is conceptualized as integrated urban governance, which involves early intervention, strict enforcement, stakeholder collaboration, and the provision of social and economic support to vulnerable groups. Seeing through the perspective of “everyday urban governance” and case studies of three markets in Ghana, this article scrutinizes the responses and politics of infection control measures in marketplaces. It demonstrates that effective response to pandemics in Ghanaian cities is contingent on the three pillars of early intervention, strict enforcement, and stakeholder collaboration. Nevertheless, this article contends that urban governance is characterized by underlying institutional tensions, which have the tendency to reverse gains made. The repressive enforcement of the pandemic protocols, the contestation between state and market actors and the (in)visibility of informal groups as subjects of infection control are examples of those tensions. The article recommends, among others, the need for municipal authorities in African cities to integrate informal actors into formal planning and governance processes, and to prioritize regional planning strategies, while paying attention to the contextual constraints, to achieve resilience against future pandemics.