On June 29, 2026, Accra flooded again.
The N1 Highway, Kaneshie, Odawna and Kwame Nkrumah Circle turned into rivers; children never reached their classrooms and even the Ghana School of Law postponed exams.
This was not a one-off, but the latest chapter in a story Ghana has lived since at least 2007. It’s not just an infrastructure issue — it’s an education issue.
Floods are one of the most recurring hazards in Ghana, second only to disease outbreaks in terms of scale.
Accra, Kumasi, Tamale, Sekondi-Takoradi and Cape Coast flood repeatedly because of paved-over wetlands, outdated drains and choked watercourses.
In the north, the crisis is slower but just as damaging: in Yendi and the Savannah Region, seasonal floods cut off communities and the Ghana Education Service (GES) officials say children arrive exhausted or don’t arrive at all.
One of many stories that rarely make headlines: classes at the Lantenkpa Junior High were halted altogether due to a damaged roof.
Every year, disasters disrupt the education of some 40 million children across the globe, leaving the most vulnerable furthest behind.
Works
Ghana has already proved that a model works. In partnership with the Ministry of Education, Ghana Commission for UNESCO, GES, Centre for National Distance Learning and Open Schooling (CENDLOS), Ghana National Association of Teachers and Coalition of Concerned Teachers, UNESCO’s Korea Funds-in-Trust (KFIT) project trained JHS/SHS teachers in Emergency Remote Teaching in five regions during COVID-19, using online modules and a helpdesk.
It showed that Ghanaian teachers had the capacity to keep learning through disruptions – but with about 450,000 teachers already working across the country, a few trained coordinators were still the foundation of a building, not the finished structure.
Other countries demonstrate what is at risk. Cyclone Idai destroyed more than 3,400 Mozambican classrooms and disrupted schooling for more than 300,000 children. UN-Habitat’s Safer Schools Programme rebuilt classrooms to cyclone-resistant standards, and one school survived three further storms – evidence that every dollar spent on resilient infrastructure saves about four dollars in reconstruction.
More than 26,000 schools were damaged, and thousands more were used as shelters during Pakistan’s 2022 floods, delaying their reopening long after the waters receded. The need for education continuity must be built into humanitarian response, not added on after.
Experience
The key lesson from Mozambique, Pakistan and Ghana’s own COVID-19 experience is consistent: where frameworks and trained personnel were in place before the disaster, learning continuity was maintained; where they weren’t, recovery took years and many children never returned.
Ghana’s rainy seasons are not becoming milder, and climate trends make floods a recurring, predictable feature of the school calendar — not an anomaly.
This is the gap a standing UNESCO–Ministry of Education–GES partnership can close: scaling ERT training beyond pioneer regions, prioritising flood-prone districts, pairing it with offline-capable learning materials, and treating resilient school infrastructure as part of the agenda.
"Leave no one behind" cannot pause for the rainy season. Ghana already has the partnerships and proof of concept.
The question isn't whether Ghana floods again — it will. It's whether, next time, a child's education floods with it.
The writer is an
Education Planner
