Ghanaian Architects Up In Arms, As David Adjaye Grabs US$6million COVID Funds Money

-To Design Hospitals That  Already Have Designs

The Akufo Addo administration’s suspicious sole-sourcing of a US$ 6 million contract for the designs of the ambitious hospital projects under the tagline “Agenda 111” to the UK-based Adjaye and Associates has drawn anger from the Ghana Institute of Architecture (GIA).

The GIA has raised red flags against the contract, saying the government did not follow laid down procedures to award the design contract to Adjaye Associates.

The Honorary Secretary of the Institute, Augustus Richardson, charged that there was no open call for bids from other members of the architectural fraternity in Ghana. 

The only time Ghana’s Public Procurement law allows entities to use single-source procurement is when the project is under exceptional circumstances like where the goods are only available from a particular contractor and when the service is an urgent one that cannot wait for a lengthy bidding process.

According to Mr. Richardson, Adjaye and Associates fulfilled none of the said exceptional circumstances 

“You handpick a person under the pretext of sole-sourcing, yet when you read the Public Procurement Authority (PPA) Act on sole-sourcing, the terms there do not apply or make these things worthwhile? Why are we doing this? We decry this as an Institute,” he said.

According to him, International best practice is against such actions.

“The point is not about him being a Ghanaian architect, we are in a global world where everything is about competition. Ghanaians compete with their abroad counterparts and the reverse is also true,” he said.

Even more disturbing are revelations that the money given to Mr. Adjaye for the project designs was drawn from funds allocated for the country’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a tweet, Bright Simons, a Vice President at the policy think-tank IMANI, “Following the protest by some Ghanaian architects about the hiring of David Adjaye to design 111 clinics for Gh Govt, I took a quick look. The $6million for the design came from COVID funds.” 

Incidentally, the Estate Management Unit of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) had long ago engaged a consultant who developed a standard modular health facility architecture concept for Ghana, and this has been used for some modern health facilities that were constructed recently.

The existing design will allow the government to upgrade the different levels of healthcare facilities as and when needed. 

Indeed, the existing designs from the GHS were the ones used to construct the Ga East Hospital and the Shai Osudoku Hospital in Ayikuma.

In 2018, the World Health Organisation (WHO) was so impressed by the designs that it identified the Shai Osudoku District Hospital at Ayikuma as a benchmark for other health facilities in Africa.

The WHO Regional Director for Africa, Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, said the hospital had set a standard that was worth emulating nationwide and in Africa.

This facility is unique and is setting the standard for the region and I am so impressed about everything here,” she said.

The Minority in Parliament is already pushing for an investigation into the juicy deal given to Adjaye and Associates because it did not pass through the Ghanaian Parliament as required by law for such foreign deals.

The inexplicable preferential treatment of Mr. Adjaye’s firm has drawn massive uproar among the Ghanaian public and the GIA, particularly given the fact that it is the same Adjaye and Associates was the one given the multi-million-dollar and contentious National Cathedral project.

Also, in the first term of the Akufo Addo administration, Adjaye has been given perhaps all the biggest architectural projects the administration had planned, including the multi-million-dollar Marine Drive project which has stalled; the Oil City Project; the Afua Sutherland Children’s Park project, and the Trade Fair Redevelopment Project.

All of these projects were sole-sourced to his firm, raising questions of potential corruption-inspired cronyism.