The local authorities have identified some 7.5 million properties that are to be given unique addresses as part of the government’s efforts at ensuring that all houses and structures are identified nationwide.

During an inspection tour of some of those properties in Accra, the national capital, on Monday, 12 April 2021, Vice-President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia said “the government of Nana Addo Dakwa Akufo-Addo is trying to solve a major problem that has faced this country and this is the address issue; there’re so many properties, so many houses that do not have an address and that problem hampers development”.

“If you do not have an address, how do you get the ambulance to come to your house?  How do you direct them? How do you get the fire service to come to your house? How do you get the police if, for example, there’s a robbery taking place? How do you direct the police to come to your house? If you apply for a job and they say: ‘What is your address?’ and you don’t know your address, it’s a problem. They can’t find you. If you apply for a loan at the bank and they say: ‘What is your address?’ you should be able to give an address. If you order goods on the internet, e-commerce, and they want to deliver to your home, you must be able to give an address. If you rent from a landlord and the Rent Control wants to know where you are, you should be able to give the address”, Dr Bawumia pointed out.

“So, we decided that we should, as a government, to leverage what we have already done in the context of the digital address system, to provide unique addresses – the emphasis is on the uniqueness – of the addresses to every house or property in Ghana.

“So Land Use and Spatial Planning Authority has been working very closely with the Ministry of Local Government and the Assemblies.

“They’ve identified about 7.5 million properties and houses in Ghana and, so, the idea for us is to make sure that each and every one of these properties has a unique address. So, the first phase of the project is what we are witnessing now.

“We’ve printed about 4 million of the address plates for the 7.5 million properties that have been identified. And what is also good is that, so far, we have, through the local government ministry and LUSPA, we’ve named every street in Ghana.

“The physical names have not yet been put on the streets but they’ve all been named in collaboration with the local authorities, district assemblies, municipal assemblies”, he added.

Last year, Dr Bawumia said the government was working toward building a complete functional national property addressing system by November.

The system would include the printing and affixing of a number plate with a street name, a street number, a house number, and a digital address.

Dr Bawumia made the remark in a radio interview on Accra-based Peace FM in August 2021.

“By November, every property in Ghana would have a unique address”, he said at the time, adding: “We will begin next month the four million that have been generated, start printing the number plates, and then start affixing them to those houses that have been generated”.

“Also, there are certain streets that have no names, they will also be named and presented to the metropolitan, municipal, and district chief executives (MMDCEs) to confirm.

"We have decided to go for unique addresses for each property ... a street name, a street number and then a house number and then a digital address, for every household, and we are starting with the printing of the four million now and then we will continue”, he reiterated.

He added: "By November we would have all of this done and it will just be left with the printing. We have done the digital address system and this is something we’ve not had since independence and digitisation has allowed us to do so”.