Ghana Secondary Cities Support Program

The development objective of the Secondary Cities Support Program Project for Ghana is to improve urban management and basic urban services in participating municipal assemblies (MAs). The program will constitute a slice of the government’s broader decentralization support program (the responsiveness factor grant (RFG) and its associated district performance assessment tool (DPAT)), specifically focusing on MAs that manage urban development in secondary cities. The program will have three windows: (i) local window, (ii) regional window, and (iii) national window. Access to the program’s Urban Development Grants (UDGs) will be conditional upon MAs complying with RFG and DPAT minimum conditions and obtaining a performance measure score that is equal to or above the national average. The program boundary of the eligible MAs under the program has been determined based on a two-stage approach. The first stage is to agree on a set of criteria which must be met by an MA before it becomes eligible to benefit from the program, and second to screen all the MAs using the same criteria and identify those that meet all the said criteria.