Narrowing down the drivers of flood risk in medium-sized sub-Saharan African cities: insights from the Greater Kumasi Metropolitan Area, Ghana.

Literature on the drivers of flooding in sub-Saharan Africa is mostly focused on large and megacities, despite the majority of cities in the region being medium- and small-sized. We conducted a systematic review using 27 peer-reviewed scientific papers selected following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) protocols using the Greater Kumasi Metropolitan Area (GKMA), Ghana, as a case study, and validated the results in a workshop attended by 51 stakeholders. We found that the reported drivers of flood risk in GKMA are land cover changes (61.5%) (e.g. wetlands degradation); governance challenges (16.2%); challenges with drainage (13%); extreme rainfall (6.5%); and apathy towards nature (3.2%). We conclude that floods in GKMA are overwhelmingly human induced through unsustainable urbanization processes that are so rapid that city authorities are unable to properly control them. Also, a holistic understanding of flood risk is missing since majority of the included papers rather used qualitative methodologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]