Accra: Ghana is shifting from reactive disaster response to proactive risk controlling with a five-year disaster management and risk finance strategy framework and implementation plan. The framework, approved in December 2025 and expected to end in 2030, is to address the estimated US$200 million the country loses every year to disasters, with floods, droughts, and fires affecting more than two million people annually, and enhance climate resilience.
According to Ghana News Agency, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the country's development partner, presented the framework to the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO), on Wednesday, January 21, in Accra for its accomplishment. It is built on eight strategic pillars - comprehensive identification, quantification, and mapping of disaster-related fiscal risks.
The others involve integrating disaster risk analysis into planning and budgeting and establishing sovereign and sub-sovereign disaster risk financing instruments. Further elements include developing private risk transfer solutions; strengthening coordination and institutional capacity; improving legal and regulatory frameworks; enhancing industry and community resilience; and adopting a layered risk management approach.
The initiative is designed to help reduce fiscal vulnerability from disasters, protect lives and livelihoods, and attract private sector investment, with pre-arranged financial instruments to strengthen national resilience against future shocks. This will be achieved through ensuring timely, predictable, and cost-effective access to financial resources for emergency response and recovery, with fires, droughts, and floods as the priority disasters.
Dr Abdul-Razak Saeed, Head of Environment and Climate, UNDP Ghana, stated that the strategy was not just a document but a roadmap for action towards moving from reactive to proactive disaster risk management. He explained that budget reallocation was necessary for effective planning and resource appropriation in Ghana's disaster management, with the framework helping to identify financial assets and approaches for effective application.
Dr Saeed emphasized the importance of developing innovative means to finance the country's disaster and climate efforts, including crowd financing, and encouraged the media to help attract private sector actors and other interested parties to support Ghana's actions. He pledged UNDP's commitment to the operationalisation of the framework, ensuring it became a functional tool rather than a symbolic document.
He noted that the success of the strategy would depend on broad stakeholder engagement, sustained investment, and strong leadership. Major Dr. Joseph Bikanyi Kuyon (RTd), Director-General, NADMO, highlighted that Ghana had positioned itself for a shift in disaster risk financing, ensuring that investments yielded better outcomes with timely interventions and climate response.
Major Kuyon (Rtd) emphasized that the framework would address the long-standing constraints associated with the absence of dedicated disaster risk financing and enhance the country's ability to respond effectively to emergencies as well as climate adaptation and mitigation. He pointed out the economic benefits of proactive investment, noting that it is more cost-effective to invest in disaster risk management than to deal with recovery after disasters occur.
He expressed appreciation to UNDP for the technical and financial assistance provided through its insurance and risk financing facility and affirmed NADMO's dedication to working with partners to operationalise the strategy for better disaster management and climate response.