On or about the 14th day of September, 2026, the Engineers Regiment of the Ghana Armed Forces completed the clearance of 175.6 kilometres of the route from Ablekuma in the Greater Accra Region to Sewua in the Ashanti Region in 19 weeks, one week ahead of the 20-week deadline set by Government.
Funding for the exercise, however, remains a mystery, and key questions are now emerging as to how it was funded.
Experts put conservative estimates at tens of millions of dollars.
A diligent search conducted by The Daily Searchlight through the 2025 Budget Statement and Economic Policy, the 2025 MDA Budget Estimates, and the subsequent official explanations concerning the Accra–Kumasi Expressway cannot identify the exact funding line that was used to carry out the project.
WHERE DID THE MONEY COME FROM?
The Daily Searchlight could not find any specific budgetary allocation in the 2025 Budget to the Ministryof Defence, the Ghana Armed Forces and the Ministry of Roads and Highways for clearing the right-of-way of the Accra–Kumasi Expressway.
The 2025 Budget does contain substantial allocations to the Ministry of Defence, but the identified allocations are for defence-related programmes rather than the expressway-clearing exercise.
The official 2025 Budget gives the Ministry of Defence a total allocation of GH¢6.3309 billion under the 2025 expenditure framework, comprising GH¢5.691 billion compensation, GH¢379.748 million goods and services and GH¢260 million CAPEX. The specifically identified CAPEX item is GH¢100 million for construction of Forward Operating Base/Northern Border Security.
There is no line item identifying the Accra–Kumasi Expressway or its clearing.
More importantly, even though 252-page 2025 Budget document contains references to the existing Accra–Kumasi Highway and the expressway projects, there is no expressway-clearing allocation under the Ministry of Defence section.
What the 2025 Budget actually says about roads
The 2025 Budget’s infrastructure allocation places the Ministry of Roads and Highways at approximately GH¢3.245 billion for 2025, including GH¢2.275 billion in CAPEX.
The Budget discusses works on the existing Accra–Kumasi Highway, including the four bypasses at Osino, Anina, Enyiresi and Konongo. It also discusses the Nsawam–Ofankor expressway and other road projects. But the new Accra–Kumasi Expressway on a new alignment is not presented in the 2025 Budget as a specific Ministry of Defence/GAF clearing project.
There is an even more interesting development in the 2025 Mid-Year Fiscal Policy Review. Government stated that it had initiated comprehensive feasibility studies for the Accra–Kumasi Expressway on a completely new alignment, together with three other projects.
What happened subsequently with the military clearing?
This is where the documentary trail becomes particularly interesting.
The Ghana Armed Forces subsequently undertook the clearing of the expressway’s right-of-way in 2026. The GAF itself says its engineers were clearing a 175.6-kilometre corridor, with the work constituting a pre-construction activity supporting feasibility and engineering studies.
And, crucially, the Ghana News Agency reported in September 2026 that:
the Ministry of Roads and Highways requested, through the Ministry of Defence, the employment of military engineers to undertake pre-construction activities on the Accra–Kumasi Expressway.
That wording is significant. It indicates a subsequent request/arrangement involving Roads and Highways and Defence, rather than a clearly identifiable appropriation in the original 2025 Defence budget for expressway clearing.
There is another very important piece of evidence
In July 2026, the Controller and Accountant-General’s Department (CAGD) specifically addressed the financing of the Accra–Kumasi Expressway.
CAGD said that Government had earmarked ABFA proceeds and mineral royalties in the 2025 Budget for the expressway and transferred the money into a dedicated Bank of Ghana account through Accra–Kumasi Expressway Limited, the project SPV. But CAGD expressly stated that:
the Ghana Armed Forces’ ongoing right-of-way clearing was a separate preparatory activity and was not financed from those expressway funds.
The question is “If Parliament did not specifically appropriate money to Defence for the Accra–Kumasi Expressway clearing, under what appropriation and authority was GAF subsequently paid to perform the work?”
Interestingly, the same is true of the detailed Ministry of Roads and Highways 2025 Budget Volume: there is no project called the “Accra–Kumasi Expressway” and no expenditure item described as clearing its right-of-way.
That is an important finding.
What Parliament actually appropriated to Defence
The enacted Appropriation Act, 2025 (Act 1126) appropriated:
Ministry of Defence
GH¢6,330,917,035
broken down principally as:
Compensation — GH¢5,691,168,726
Goods and Services — GH¢379,748,309
Capital expenditure — GH¢260,000,000
The Act also records GH¢40,550,563 in IGF resources, bringing the broader Defence total to GH¢6,371,467,598.
Within that:
Ghana Armed Forces
The GAF itself was appropriated:
GH¢5,807,755,102
from GoG resources:
Compensation — GH¢5,235,969,387
Goods & Services — GH¢327,785,715
CAPEX — GH¢244,000,000
plus IGF, bringing the broader GAF figure to GH¢5,848,305,666.
What was the GH¢260 million Defence capital allocation actually for?
This is particularly revealing.
The Defence PBB gives the 2025 capital ceiling of GH¢260 million and identifies the capital projects.
The two specifically identified projects include:
Reconstruction of two Ministry of Defence bungalows — GH¢10.6 million
Construction of Forward Operating Base at Ezinlibo, Jomoro District — GH¢100 million
The document then states that the difference between the annual capital ceiling and the project allocations is earmarked for non-infrastructure CAPEX such as vehicles, computers, furniture, etc.
There is no Accra–Kumasi Expressway clearing project in this capital programme.
What about the Ghana Armed Forces’ Goods and Services allocation?
The GAF received GH¢327.786 million for Goods and Services under the 2025 appropriation.
However, the fact that GAF had a large Goods and Services vote does not automatically mean that the Government could simply charge expressway clearing to it.
The appropriation is made within approved programmes, sub-programmes, economic classifications and spending plans.
The Public Financial Management Act, 2016 (Act 921), section 32, permits a virement, but it imposes conditions on how appropriated funds may be moved. In particular, a virement that changes the approved spending plans requires prior written approval from the Minister responsible for Finance; and a transfer of appropriated amounts between covered entities cannot simply be made by administrative fiat — Parliament’s approval through a supplementary estimate is required.
Was any part of the GAF/Defence appropriation subsequently vired or otherwise authorised for the expressway operation?
Again, there no evidence of such a virement in the published 2025 budget documents.
That does not prove that no such transaction occurred. It means that it is not disclosed in the published appropriation documents we have examined.
The Roads and Highways budget is equally revealing
The 2025 Appropriation Act gives the Ministry of Roads and Highways:
GH¢3,244,979,700
comprising:
GoG: GH¢2.4057 billion
IGF: GH¢54.76 million
Other funding: GH¢784.519 million.
When we drill down into the actual Roads and Highways project schedule, there is an allocation relating to the old Accra–Kumasi Highway:
Project 0824157
“Section Repairs of Accra – Kumasi Highway”
Allocation:
GH¢1,400,000
This appears in the detailed 2025 Ghana Highway Authority budget.
But this is not the new Accra–Kumasi Expressway.
That distinction is crucial.
The Government’s own 2025 Budget was discussing works on the existing Accra–Kumasi Highway, including the Osino, Anyinam, Enyeresi and Konongo bypasses.
The new expressway on a completely new alignment appears later in the 2025 Mid-Year Review as a project for which comprehensive feasibility studies had been initiated.
So where was the new Expressway in the 2025 financial architecture?
Here we encounter something very important.
The 2025 Mid-Year Review states that:
Government had allocated GH¢13.8 billion to the Big Push Programme in the 2025 Budget, with oil revenues and mineral royalties dedicated to the programme.
It then states that comprehensive feasibility studies had been initiated for:
“Accra–Kumasi Expressway on a completely new alignment.”
This means that the expressway was connected to the Big Push framework, rather than appearing as a conventional Roads and Highways project line in the Ministry’s detailed 2025 budget.
But even here, there is a distinction between:
money earmarked for the expressway project
and
money appropriated to the Ministry of Defence/GAF to clear the right-of-way.
They are not the same thing.
And CAGD has now provided the critical confirmation
This is probably the most important piece of evidence for your investigation.
On 16 July 2026, the Controller and Accountant-General’s Department explained that Government had allocated ABFA and mineral royalty proceeds in the 2025 Budget to finance the Accra–Kumasi Expressway through Accra–Kumasi Expressway Limited, the GIIF-established SPV.
But CAGD expressly stated that:
the funds had not been paid to a contractor or used for construction.
More importantly, CAGD stated that the GAF right-of-way clearing was a separate preparatory activity and was not financed from those expressway funds.
That substantially narrows the question.
We now have a three-money-pot problem
The evidence presently points to three separate financial streams:
| Financial stream | What the documents show |
| 2025 Defence/GAF appropriation | GH¢6.33bn Defence / GH¢5.81bn GAF; no expressway-clearing line |
| 2025 Roads & Highways appropriation | GH¢3.245bn; GH¢1.4m for Section Repairs of Accra–Kumasi Highway, but no new Expressway clearing line |
| ABFA/mineral royalties for new Expressway | Funds earmarked and transferred to the Expressway SPV; CAGD says these were not used for GAF clearing |
The third stream is therefore expressly ruled out by CAGD as the source of GAF’s clearing expenditure.
This makes the GAF contract extremely important
We now have an official statement that in 2026:
the Ministry of Roads and Highways requested, through the Ministry of Defence, the employment of military engineers for the pre-construction activities.
GNA reported that GAF was engaged to undertake the preparatory works and that the clearing covered the expressway corridor.
A subsequent GNA report states even more specifically that:
“The GAF was contracted through the Ministry of Defence by the Ministry of Roads and Highways to undertake pre-construction activities for the Accra-Kumasi Expressway.”
This is the first public evidence I have found describing the arrangement as a contract.
And that raises the central financial question:
If GAF was contracted by Roads and Highways through Defence in 2026, where was the appropriation/warrant/payment authority for that contract?
The legal significance
Under Ghana’s public-financial-management system, an expenditure cannot simply be incurred because a Ministry considers the expenditure desirable.
The Public Financial Management Act, 2016 (Act 921) establishes the framework for appropriation, warrants, commitments and expenditure.
The 2019 PFM Regulations further provide that a warrant is required for expenditure and payments by covered entities and that the warrant must be within the applicable budget allotment. The Regulations also prescribe procedures for commitments before a contract is awarded.
And section 32 of Act 921 is particularly relevant because it regulates virement.
Consequently, if the GAF clearing was financed from an existing Defence vote, we should expect to find a documentary trail such as:
Appropriation → allotment → warrant → commitment → contract/service arrangement → payment.
If it was financed by Roads and Highways:
Roads & Highways appropriation → allotment/warrant → arrangement with Defence → commitment → payment/reimbursement to Defence/GAF.
If it was a transfer from one covered entity to another, section 32(3)(d) becomes particularly relevant because the Act restricts transfers of appropriated amounts between covered entities without parliamentary approval through a supplementary estimate.
Conclusion
Based on the actual 2025 Appropriation Act, the Defence PBB, the detailed Roads and Highways estimates, and the subsequent CAGD explanation, The Daily Searchlight can state the finding this way:
The 2025 Budget and Appropriation Act contain no identifiable line-item appropriation to the Ministry of Defence or Ghana Armed Forces for clearing the Accra–Kumasi Expressway. The Defence capital programme does not contain the project, and the detailed Roads and Highways budget does not contain a corresponding clearing item. The GH¢1.4 million provided for “Section Repairs of Accra–Kumasi Highway” relates to the existing highway and should not be conflated with the new expressway. CAGD has subsequently confirmed that the funds earmarked in 2025 for the new Accra–Kumasi Expressway were held separately and were not used to finance GAF’s right-of-way clearing.
That is a much stronger conclusion than simply saying “I couldn’t find a budget allocation.”
The 2026 Budget: GH¢30 billion
The 2026 Budget is unequivocal that Government made a very substantial new provision for infrastructure.
The Budget provides:
GH¢30 billion — Big Push Infrastructure Programme
The Budget’s expenditure framework records GH¢30 billion in domestically financed capital expenditure for the Big Push.
The detailed allocation identifies the funding sources as:
| Source | 2026 provision |
| ABFA | GH¢7.297 billion |
| Mineral royalties | GH¢7.368 billion |
| GoG | GH¢15.334 billion |
| Total Big Push CAPEX | GH¢30.000 billion |
These figures are contained in the 2026 Budget’s MDA expenditure allocation.
This is important because the GH¢30 billion is not simply a Roads and Highways Ministry vote.
It appears as a separate Big Push CAPEX allocation.
Was the whole GH¢30 billion for the Accra–Kumasi Expressway?
No.
The 2026 Budget says:
“we are allocating GH¢30.0 billion in 2026 for the Big Push Infrastructure Programme for strategic roads and bridges.”
It does not say:
GH¢30 billion for the Accra–Kumasi Expressway.
Rather, the Budget subsequently identifies the Expressway as one of the projects being added to the Big Push after feasibility studies and designs were completed.
The Budget therefore establishes a GH¢30 billion Big Push appropriation, but the published Appropriation Act does not break that GH¢30 billion into individual projects.
That distinction is vital if this is going to be used in an investigative article.
What Parliament actually appropriated in the 2026 Appropriation Act
The enacted Appropriation (No. 2) Act, 2025 (Act 1163) authorises withdrawal of up to:
GH¢357,105,639,080
for the 2026 financial year.
Within the expenditure framework, the Act identifies:
Capital expenditure
GH¢57.529 billion
of which:
Domestic-financed CAPEX
GH¢45.493 billion
including:
Big Push ABFA CAPEX
GH¢14.666 billion
The Act itself therefore gives legal effect to the 2026 appropriation framework.
But here is the critical point:
The Act does not contain a separate project line saying:
“Accra–Kumasi Expressway — GH¢30 billion.”
Instead, the Big Push allocation appears as a broader programme-level allocation.
What did the Roads Ministry itself receive?
The 2026 Appropriation Act gives the Ministry of Roads and Highways a total of:
GH¢5,378,458,359
This consists principally of:
Compensation;
Goods and Services;
Capital expenditure; and
other funding sources.
The Act breaks the Roads Ministry’s programmes down as follows:
| Roads & Highways programme | 2026 allocation |
| Management & Administration | GH¢311.926m |
| Road & Bridge Construction | GH¢2.101bn |
| Roads Rehabilitation & Maintenance | GH¢2.801bn |
| Road Safety & Environment | GH¢164.715m |
| Total | GH¢5.378bn |
Again, there is no separate Accra–Kumasi Expressway line in this schedule.
This suggests that the financing architecture of the Expressway is deliberately outside the ordinary Roads Ministry project-by-project appropriation, operating through the Big Push/SPV structure.
This is where Parliament’s December 2025 approval becomes important
On 17–18 December 2025, Parliament considered and adopted the Roads and Highways Committee’s report on the concession agreement between the Government of Ghana and Accra–Kumasi Expressway Limited.
Parliament’s own website confirms that the Roads & Transportation Committee reviewed the contract and engaged the Finance Committee leadership.
The Committee’s consideration was therefore not merely a budget debate.
It involved the underlying contractual/concession arrangement.
The reported Parliamentary approval was for the concession agreement between Government and the SPV.
The Committee said the Government intended to fully fund the project through the Big Push.
The GH¢13.8 billion from 2025
This is where the financial trail becomes particularly interesting.
The 2025 Budget allocated:
GH¢13.8 billion
to the Big Push Programme.
The 2025 Mid-Year Review said oil revenues and mineral royalties accruing to the Budget had been dedicated to Big Push projects.
But the December 2025 Parliamentary explanation subsequently stated that the GH¢13.8 billion allocation had been drawn down and ring-fenced to support the Expressway.
Then CAGD provided the accounting explanation in July 2026.
It said that Government transferred funds to Accra–Kumasi Expressway Limited, the SPV established by GIIF, and that the transfer appeared as expenditure in Central Government’s accounts because of the accounting treatment applicable to transfers to entities outside the Central Government accounting group.
But:
CAGD says the money was still sitting in the dedicated Bank of Ghana account.
It had:
not been paid to a contractor;
not been used for construction; and
not financed the GAF right-of-way clearing.
That explains the otherwise startling GH¢10.9169 billion figure in the 2025 Whole-of-Government Accounts.
The GH¢10.9169 billion deserves special attention
The 2025 Audited Annual Whole-of-Government Accounts reportedly recorded:
GH¢10,916,912,468.56
under Government Priority Programmes for the Accra–Kumasi Expressway.
That figure generated questions in Parliament and from the Minority because actual construction had not commenced.
The Minority requested a detailed expenditure breakdown.
But CAGD subsequently clarified that the accounting entry did not mean GH¢10.9169 billion had actually been consumed on construction.
According to CAGD, the money had been transferred from the Consolidated Fund to the Expressway SPV and remained in a dedicated Bank of Ghana account.
Therefore the GH¢10.9169 billion recorded as expenditure/transfer in the 2025 Government accounts — not GH¢10.9169 billion demonstrably spent on physical construction.
That distinction is extremely important.
Then comes the US$1.7 billion
On 23 July 2026, during the 2026 Mid-Year Fiscal Policy Review, the Finance Minister gave Parliament an updated position.
He said:
US$1.7 billion had, as of 22 July 2026, been deposited into the dedicated Accra–Kumasi Expressway Account at the Bank of Ghana.
He said the money was ring-fenced and would only be used after the main construction contract was awarded.
This gives us an important distinction:
GH¢10.9169bn recorded in 2025 accounts
versus
US$1.7bn reported as deposited by July 2026.
The funding is no longer merely theoretical
By September 2026, Government had moved beyond budgetary provision.
The Finance Minister had stated that the US$1.7 billion was already in the dedicated account, while President Mahama subsequently stated that US$2 billion was available and that Government expected the full financing to be assembled by the end of 2026.
The final word, however, is that neither the 2025 budget nor the 2026 budget identifies a line budget set aside for the clearing, which brings the question; where did the money come from?
