Brief Profile Of Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolitan Area

The city Sekondi-Takoradi is the 3rd largest city in Ghana, after Accra and Kumasi. It is located on the southern-western coast of the Republic of Ghana, about 242km west of the national capital, Accra, and 280km east of La Cote D’Ivoire. Sekondi-Takoradi is the capital of the Western Region of Ghana, known popularly as the ‘Twin-City’ and the only ‘Oil City’

The demographic set-up of the metropolis indicates a total population of 245,382; with 48.6% males and 51.4% female according to the 2021 Population and Housing Census. Urban population of 85%, per-urban population of 11% and rural population of 4%. STMA covers a land area of 66.44km2

The growth of the twin-city of Sekondi-Takoradi in the last decade has been spurred by the advantages conferred on the city by the oil-find in the Western Region of Ghana in 2007 and the entrepreneurial capacity nurtured through sequence of private, in the form of downstream oil ancillary services and hospitality industry, and government actions through infrastructural development. Sekondi-Takoradi is also a key hub for the railway network in the country and has an airport for domestic flights.

The major economic activities and the percentage it employs are Industry (19.1%) Agriculture (21%) and Services (59.9%). 84.6% of the employed are in the private sector and 69.3% of these private sector players are in the informal sector. Commerce and Industry-related activities are the major contributors to the local economy. The economy of the Metropolis is propelled by fishing, service (trading, administration, and industrial activities).

The Metropolis boasts of some tourist sites and there exists enormous potential to develop these sites into major tourism destinations in Ghana. The sites include Fort Orange and the colonial High Court Building in Sekondi, as well as the Monkey Hill and Ghana’s first Seaport in Takoradi. The city has a rich cultural heritage which is exhibited during celebrations of annual Kundum Festiva between June and July, Masquerades Carnival in December and ‘Yesu Asor’ as part of the easter festivities.

As a budding and increasingly urbanized metropolis: population pressures on municipal services, diminishing of social safety-nets for the vulnerable, and the effects of urban sprawl and climate change are some of the perennial challenges confronting Sekondi-Takoradi. Critical to addressing these urban challenges is implementing strategies that results in a safe, inclusive, resilient and sustainable city that links sustainable development to livelihood improvement for all. This has found expression in the city’s 4-year Medium-Term Plan (2022-2025) that aligns with its overall vision of being a world-class city with modern infrastructure, social services, best governance, attractive business and living environment, and is in harmony with the national development focus.

Open Government Partnership (OGP) Journey

By virtue of Ghana’s membership, the Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolitan Assembly (STMA) became eligible to apply for and participated in the subnational pilot program organized by the OGP in 2015. The pilot program for Subnational Government was a way of giving meaning to the tenets of OGP at the grassroots level through the efforts of Local Governments, Civil Society Organizations (CSO’s) and most importantly, the involvement of citizens to spur change.

In 2016, STMA was competitively selected among fifteen subnational government across the globe. As a member of the 2016 pioneering cohort of the Open Government Partnership’s (OGP) Sub-national Pilot Program, now OGP Local, STMA together with its partner civil society organizations and other local reformers have done significant work to promote and institutionalize the ethos of the OGP at the sub-national level; through the co-creation and implementation of two (2) transformational local action plans; open government vision of “building a responsive and sustainable city government that commands the trust and confidence of citizens’’ with commitments in the areas of infrastructure transparency, access to information, inclusive participation, and citizen-centric municipal service delivery. Co-created the 3rd OGP Local Action 2022-2025 and published by the OGP International in August 2022 focuses on enhancing effectiveness in municipal service delivery, strengthening government accountability, and broadening the civic space for ordinary citizens and civil society to actively participate in local governance. STMA to join at CoST - the Infrastructure Transparency Initiative in 2018.

Sister-City Relations

Sekondi-Takoradi over the past decades has engaged in sister-city city-to-city partnerships to explore possible areas of cooperation, learning and sharing of expertise in best practices in sustainable urban management. Sekondi-Takoradi has twining-relationships with Plymouth in the United Kingdom, Oakland-California in the United States of America and the Municipality of Palermo in Italy.

Priority Areas for International Collaborations

1. Promote Smart-City Management and Climate Resilience:

challenges brought on as a result of urban sprawl, Sekondi-Takoradi aspires to be a city that creates an enabling environment for residents to enjoy the benefits of urban life through interventions that range from poverty reduction, exclusion and unemployment to environmental degradation and climate change.
Rapid advances in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and big data analytics are creating opportunities for city managers to address several challenges and help communities to deal with climate change challenges and to make advances towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Accordingly, the city of Sekondi-Takoradi is embracing this digital transition to enhance city management and the use of big data to deliver on municipal services and address the effects of urban sprawl and climate change. In furtherance of this, the city seeks to enter into mutually beneficial transnational relationships that enhances its ability to undertake peer-to-peer job-shadowing and capacity building on city management and urban revitalization, digital transitioning through e-governance tools and resilience of the city.

2.Promote Mutual Transnational Cooperation for Tourism and Socio-Economic Development:

To explore the potentialities of tourism and cultural heritage to spur socio-economic development, Sekondi-Takoradi would explore partnerships that create new income and employment opportunities through taking advantage of the rich cultural heritage and the numerous natural assets in partner cities for a mutually beneficial partnership.
In this regard, it is expected that relations with a sister-city should jointly address heritage conservation, community development, and tourism objectives to create positive synergies that stimulate local economic development for all partners.

3.Promote Academic and Research Initiative

Educational partnerships and developments, including joint research and teaching programmes provides platforms for creating mutually beneficial and deeper understanding between partner cities. Such twining relationships would serve a means of intercity collaborations in academic researches that have the potential to bridge the knowledge divide in creating sustainable cities for partners.