During the last quarter of last year, we received a Nigerian delegation to our offices in Accra. During interaction some of them told us, "you people have good roads, free movement during the day and night, but in terms of beauty, Accra is not one of the best. We have heard a lot about Accra, so we were expecting to see a beautiful city, but that is not what we have seen."

A Kenyan journalist, who attended the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) conference in Ghana last year, was also overheard on one of the radio stations saying that she had heard a lot about Accra, but was disappointed when she finally arrived in the country.

"Like most African cities, you people have a lot of slums at the centre of Accra, which does not give a good image of the city," she said.

These two examples, which we have cited, clearly show that Accra needs modernisation to uplift the image of the Ghana's capital.

In North America, all the major cities have what they call 'Downtown', which is the most beautiful part of the city. Unfortunately, we cannot see these things in Accra. The only part of the city that can somehow be described as downtown is the North Ridge and Cantonments areas.

As we noted yesterday, Accra has found itself in such a mess, due to lack of proper planning by the city authorities. As a way of beautifying the city, The Chronicle suggests that the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) must sit down with owners of the various slums, and negotiate with them to pull down the structures, and sell the land to private individuals, who must be mandated to put up buildings to certain specifications and heights.

Those owners/occupants, whose structures are to be pulled down, must be allocated a specific number of rooms in the new building, or be made shareholders of the building.

Similarly, the government can also release its bungalows at the centre of the city to private developers to put up modern offices, and use the top of the building as residences for ministers and civil servants.

This would mean that both the government and the developers would become joint owners.

Alternatively the government can ask the developers to put up the building, operate it for specific years to recoup their investment, and then transfer it to the government.

Readers, who are familiar with the geography of Kumasi, would agree that part of Adum, a suburb of the city, used to be a slum area, but as a result of negotiations with owners of the old buildings, modern buildings have today sprung up in the area, and are beautifying the city.

If such negotiations could succeed in Kumasi, the second largest city, then we do not see why it cannot happen in Accra too. The capital city, as it stands now, does not give a good image of this beautiful country called Ghana.

We have more natural resources than Ivory Coast, yet Accra cannot compare itself to Abidjan. Accra certainly needs a facelift, and the action must start now.