From Commitments to Action: Financing Equitable WASH Services in Ghana.

The briefing note, highlights a critical funding shortfall in Ghana's Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) sector. While nominal GHS expenditure has risen, real investment in USD was cut nearly in half between 2019 and 2022 due to inflation, national debt, and currency depreciation, causing sector expenditure as a share of GDP to fall from 2.67% to 1.39%. Funding is heavily skewed toward urban areas and water supply (58%), leaving rural communities, Water Resources Management (at 0.1%), and sanitation/hygiene severely underfunded—well below the international 0.5% GDP Ngor Commitment benchmark. Furthermore, households bear 80% of total sector costs through tariffs and self-supply, placing a heavy burden on poorer families. To achieve universal basic access by 2030, the document calls on the government, donors, NGOs, and the private sector to bridge the annual ~$500 million funding gap, ring-fence funds for underfunded sub-sectors, and prioritize resource allocation toward rural areas and deprived regions like the Northern, Upper, and Oti regions.

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