Professor Christopher Ameyaw-Akumfi, a former Board Chairman of the Ghana Infrastructure Investment Fund (GIIF) and the Public Procurement Authority (PPA), was detained for several hours by the National Intelligence Bureau (NIB) on Sunday, February 23, 2025.
Reports indicated that Prof Ameyaw-Akumfi was arrested for authorising the release of $2 million to Africa Investor Holdings, the company behind the Sky Train Project.
The Sky Train Project was one of the audacious infrastructure projects online by the previous New Patriotic Party (NPP) government, led by former President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
Here is all you need to know about the project.
Agreement for the construction of the Sky Train:
In 2018, the Ghana Sky Train Limited was established by Africa Investor Holdings Limited, seeking to incorporate a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) in Mauritius for the Accra Sky Train Project’s development through a Design, Build, Finance, and Operate arrangement.
The sky train was expected to have a total track length of 194 kilometres and made up of five routes, four of which are comprised of radial routes that originate at the proposed SkyTrain Terminal, at the heart of Accra, at a newly developed Kwame Nkrumah Circle, and one (1) route that provides an intra-city commuter loop distribution service, also emanating from Circle.
The Akufo-Addo government, in November 2019, announced that it had signed a concession agreement for the construction of the Accra Sky Train.
At the signing ceremony on Monday, November 11, 2019, President Akufo-Addo described it as “a happy day for Ghana and her good people,” adding that it is a “critical step towards the consummation of this project.”
Audit revelations about the project:
However, two years later, an Auditor-General’s report indicated that the government of Ghana has spent a whopping $2 million on the sky train which was originally costed at $3 billion, but with nothing to show for it.
The said amount, the Auditor-General said, was executed through the Ghana Infrastructure Investment Fund’s acquisition of 10 ordinary shares in the Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV), Ai Sky Train Consortium Holdings.
According to the 2021 audit report, despite the money spent, the feasibility studies for the project are still inconclusive.
What Akufo-Addo’s ministers who took charge of the project said:
Former Minister of Railways Development, Joe Ghartey,
Joe Ghartey, under whose tenure the Sky Train Project started, stated that he never paid any money to Ai Sky nor authorised the payment of US$2 million to fund the Accra Sky Train Project.
He added, “The GIIF is the statutory corporation that has the power to make such payments, and so you can ask them.”
In January 2024, Joe Ghartey attributed the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic to impeding the Akufo-Addo government’s quest to move ahead with the Sky Train project.
According to him, key investors for the project withdrew as a result of the pandemic, which caused delays and subsequently affected implementation.
Speaking in an interview on Accra-based Joy News, the former Member of Parliament of Essikado-Ketan noted that South African investors for the project explained their decision in a letter they wrote to him.
“The South Africans pulled out after COVID… What they wrote to me was that because of COVID, things have changed, they can’t come. That is what they wrote to me, that we have to wait,” he recounted.
When asked whether the government should make plans to resume the Sky Train project, Joe Ghartey indicated that it is “up to them [government].”
“It depends on how much money you have. It [also] depends on whether the people are prepared to do it,” he added.
Former Minister of Railways Development, John Peter Amewu
John Peter Amewu, who took over from Joe Ghartey, in an interview on City TV’s ‘Face to Face,’ said that the government would not go ahead with the Sky Train project as planned.
According to him, the government would not be able to fund the project, owing to its intensity in terms of capital investment.
“The Sky Train that we are talking about is the one that is going to run on columns in the sky like the ones you see in Dubai, but no agreement has been signed. It is not possible to be done now. I don’t see any Sky Train being done in the next three to four years. There is not going to be any Sky Train in the country. It is not possible,” he stated.
The minister noted that the funding for the construction of some already commenced projects is becoming a problem for the government, hence the need for the state to forgo the Sky Train project.
“Rail construction takes a lot of time, and it is also capital-intensive. A kilometre of a railway line is about four to five times the cost of building a concrete infrastructure in terms of building an asphaltic road.
“So, considering the fiscal space that we have in the country, facilities to absorb it are becoming problematic for the government, and you know our current debt-to-GDP ratio, which is in excess of 70%,” he said.
BAI/AE
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