ACCRA, Ghana – Days of unrelenting torrential rainfall have unleashed catastrophic flooding and deadly landslides across the capital cities of West African nations Ghana and Ivory Coast, leaving at least 24 people dead as emergency responders race to evacuate hundreds of trapped residents from waterlogged structures, national authorities confirmed Tuesday.
In Ghana’s capital Accra and the adjacent industrial port city of Tema, the floodwaters swallowed entire buildings, swamped major roadways, and severed travel access to multiple hard-hit neighborhoods by Monday. The Ghana National Fire Service has recorded 12 confirmed fatalities in the country, including a mother and her young child who were swept away by rushing floodwaters in the densely populated Achimota-Agbogbloshie district, said service spokesperson Alex King Nartey in an interview with The Associated Press.
Across the border in Ivory Coast, the sustained downpour has caused devastating flooding that killed more than a dozen people, the vast majority of whom lived in the Attécoubé and Yopougon municipalities of Ivorian economic capital Abidjan, stated Minister of National Cohesion Myss Belmonde Dogo. Local media reports confirm that at least nine of those fatalities were crushed under collapsed building rubble in Abidjan’s Mossikro neighborhood, after days of rain that first began saturating the region on Saturday.
Footage circulating from Accra captures the urgent, community-led response to the disaster: local residents wade and swim through neck-deep floodwaters to pull trapped neighbors to safety, while dozens of vehicles sit abandoned on inundated roads that have become impassible. For emergency teams, reaching cut-off communities has presented a major logistical barrier that forced officials to request additional support from the country’s military, Nartey explained. As of Tuesday morning, dozens of residential neighborhoods remained partially submerged.
Ghana’s National Disaster Management Organisation reported that emergency alert calls began flooding agency communications starting around 7 a.m. Monday, as alarmed residents realized rising waters were seeping into their homes. “The whole place was flooded. It’s alarming,” said Mariam Dongyela Millah, the agency’s deputy director of communications.
Looking ahead, the Ghana Meteorological Agency has issued new warnings urging local residents to brace for additional heavy rainfall across Accra throughout the rest of the week.
This disaster underscores a long-documented pattern of deadly extreme weather across much of Africa. Deadly seasonal flooding is a recurring hazard across many regions of the continent, which the World Meteorological Organization ranks as one of the globe’s most vulnerable regions to climate-driven extreme weather events – despite the fact that African nations contribute only a tiny fraction of global greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change.