Transforming Ghana’s Ankobra River into a vibrant transport corridor

Over history, nations have developed and grown on their major river basins. They still do.

• Tonnage. Ports on China’s Yangtze were expected to handle more than 4 billion tonnes of cargo in 2024 — the busiest inland waterway in the world. The Rhine carried 281.9 million tonnes in 2025.
• Trucks off the road. In the United States, one 15-barge tow carries as much as 1,050 trucks.
• Savings. On a gallon of fuel, a barge moves a tonne of cargo about four and a half times as far as a truck. For the same cargo, trucks give off about nine times the greenhouse gas.
• Lives saved. For every death in a barge accident, trucks moving the same freight cause 121. More than 2,400 people died on Ghana’s roads in 2024.

Sources: China Ministry of Transport, via Hellenic Shipping News; Central Commission for the Navigation of the Rhine; Texas A&M Transportation Institute for the National Waterways Foundation (2022); Ghana National Road Safety Authority, via GNA.

The Ankobra runs from the gold and bauxite belt of Western Ghana to the sea near Axim. Today its cargo moves by road. We plan to make the river navigable all year, for about 245 km from the ocean to Awaso. We are also exploring a canal connecting the Ankobra to the Offin River, to unlock Nyinahin and Kumasi.

• A navigation channel, dredged and excavated along the river.
• Eighteen locks and weirs that lift vessels 113 m, from sea level to Awaso.
• Electric motor vessels, each carrying about 3,500 tonnes.

Development of the project began in 2023, exploring transport by river to Prestea. Since then we have:

• surveyed the river by canoe, drone, LiDAR and multibeam sonar;
• built a terrain model of the river, and hydraulic models to a 1-in-100-year flood standard;
• drilled boreholes and designed the locks, weirs and vessels;
• secured environmental, water-use and minerals permits; and
• met the river communities, their chiefs, the districts and national government.

We are now preparing the final engineering and modelling to allow the project to be financed, and expect to begin construction soon.