Traffitech: Katanomics can turn smart ideas into absurdities

Traffitech-GH went live on 1 November. Almost immediately five Ghanaian transport unions declared a strike for 4th November.

Despite making their grievances about bad road traffic infrastructure in general, a pointed line in their statement makes it clear what the fight is really about: “We cannot operate in bus stops occupied by traders and still be fined by cameras.”

When the idea of automating fines for bad driving using cameras first reared its head, I asked if the Police can truly transcend katanomics.

I asked simply because katanomics can turn even ideas that look brilliant, obvious, and inevitable, into a mess of absurdities.

If the road network and ancillary structures themselves are disorganised, it becomes unreasonable to automate fines as if each offence is straightforward.

A major part of why the current manual police enforcement of traffic rules is the way it is owes to the fact that judgement has to be applied to adjust strict rules against the reality of a pervasive physical mess.

But the state has chosen to bring a very modern way to punish people for disorder caused by a very old mess. Standard katanomics.

The “WHAT” is always easy to sell. In this case, it is simply “stop the carnage.” And the carnage is real. Road crashes killed 2,949 people in 2025, the highest in 35 years.

Who can oppose “doing something about it”? But as katanomics teaches, we always pay little attention to “the HOW.” So it escapes scrutiny, and every awkward question gets treated as an attack on progress.

This mindset of thinking that intentions and attempts are enough is the biggest impediment to real progress in Ghana because those who call it out would always come across as unreasonable.

Other times, sloppy preparatory work is excused with the argument that it is best to start and improve later. Which isn’t totally ridiculous except that it presumes that national learning is a giving.

The whole mission of katanomics is to show how and why such learning almost never happens.

Citizens should just look around them and pay attention to the whole host of initiatives that were begun on just this premise and stayed sloppy forever. Remember a certain sugar factory?

Now that the cameras are rolling, the awkward questions about Traffitech will continue to multiply. I am writing this piece purely for future reference. And as part of the documentation for teaching katanomics.

Guess the limit

The MTTD now concedes that Traffitech-GH is limited to speeding and that “[for] other offences, we will continue to enforce them manually.”

In August, the Interior Minister was telling us it covered more than 47 offences. Essentially, all the rancour is about addressing, what, 2% of the problem?

Hard to say, as research into which offences cause the most harm hasn’t been conducted for eons.

But even with respect to speeding, the most basic question confronting every driver as the system rolls out has been left murky: how fast am I allowed to go here?

The Police FAQ gives four answers: 50 km/h in built-up areas, 90 on highways, 100 on motorways, and 30 km/h within a school, playground, health facility, church, mosque, market, shopping centre or procession, or “anywhere human activity is predominant.”

Try to picture Accra or Kumasi as you read those words. How exactly does a zone of predominant human activity look like? Where does one begin and end?

Does a highway become a market zone when the hawkers surge in? At what point does the driver accelerate again?

In classic katanomic and state enchantment fashion, the state has bought cameras to measure speed to the kilometre but left motorists to figure out on their own the geography of offending.

The FAQ does promise signs at the start of enforced corridors and at “selected points” along them.

Then it removes any value from the promise: “A licensed driver must be conversant with the above whether or not a speed-limit sign is posted.” And, of course, at launch time, the signs were nowhere to be found.

When drivers complain about faulty street & traffic lights and missing signs, ACP Alexander Obeng of the Police MTTD replies, “We should not mix the issues up.” Seriously?

On day one, ACP Obeng gave the game away. Announcing that some drivers had done over 130 km/h on Mahama Road, a 50 km/h road, he warned, “When the road is straight and flat in the city, don’t think it is a highway.” That is a policeman conceding that the road itself tells drivers one thing while the law says another. The usual remedy for that is called a sign.

It gets murkier because the Police intend to rely a lot on moving cameras. The launch briefing confirmed that cameras have been placed in unmarked police vehicles and on tripods.

But there is a world of difference between concealing the policeman and concealing the rule. CUTS International pointed out that L.I. 2519 itself provides for signage alongside speed cameras and asked that limits be posted before every camera.

Clearly, as it would become clear soon, the ambiguity is deliberately designed to serve the financial goals of the project.

The argument that motorists ought to know the rules by heart is rather rich. The revised Highway Code, launched in October 2023 to replace a version from 1974, predates the 2026 regulations, and it shows. It has no provisions to cater for such dynamic shifts.

I doubt many have considered the issue of the speed units either. About 90 per cent of cars on Ghana’s roads are imported used vehicles, and many come from the United States, where speedometers tend to be set to miles per hour.

The few signs that do exist only display a bare number, without units. As one safety professional noted in the Chronicle, a driver who sees “50” and holds steady at 50 on an American dial is actually driving at about 80 km/h.

None of this was unforeseen. In April 2018, the President’s road-safety plan promised GH¢335 million a year for three years for signs and road markings. Eight years later, the state has been able to push out the fines. The signs may come later.

Even the price is a guess

You would think the fine, at least, would be clear. The graduated schedule for automated offences under Regulation 242 starts at GH¢120 for each of the first three offences.

But in October, ACP Obeng told listeners that for speeding, “any 5 kilometers per hour above the limit… the penalty starts at 20 penalty units”, that is GH¢240, and rising.

Other explainers put speeding at GH¢240 to GH¢480. Clearly, the murkiness is structural.

At least, the formula for late payments is more straightforward. If also brutal. After 14 days, 1 per cent of the fine is added for every day of default, with no published ceiling. That is a simple annual rate of ~365 per cent.

A GH¢240 fine thus becomes GH¢480 after 100 days of default and GH¢1,116 after a year.

Meanwhile, amidst all this, the Roads Minister told Parliament in June that the state owes the companies that maintain traffic signals about GH¢40 million.

The government doesn’t mind pilling arrears when it comes to the traffic-lights needed for road safety but as for drivers they better not even dream of owing.

Looking in the wrong place

The next absurdity is geographic. Ghana’s road deaths are not, mostly, a downtown Accra problem.

In 2025, Ashanti recorded 692 deaths and Eastern 649, against 420 for Greater Accra, even though Greater Accra had the most crashes.

The difference is lethality. Eastern Region recorded 28 deaths for every 100 crashes; Greater Accra recorded 10. People die on the long intercity stretches, at highway speeds, in head-on collisions and in the dark.

Even inside the capital, the city’s Accra Road Safety Report 2024 is clear on where to focus. Of 118 deaths in the Accra Metropolitan Area that year, 76 per cent happened on highways within the city, such as the N1, not on ordinary town streets.

Spots such as Kwashieman intersection and the Ring Road Central corridor. More deaths occurred between 8 and 10 at night than in any other two-hour window, and half came on weekends. Vulnerable road users (pedestrians, motorcyclists and cyclists) were 86 per cent of the dead.

No one is saying that speeding in Accra isn’t an issue. Observational studies found between 44 and 49 per cent of vehicles over the limit on monitored roads in 2024.

The question is whether a few dozen mobile camera units, launched first in towns, are aimed at tackling the deaths based on evidence or at opportunities to fine lots of people quickly.

We asked that the Police publish the deployment plan against the crash map, including evening and weekend coverage, and thereby let the public tell a safety hotspot from a profitable camera position. Didn’t happen.

We should also not lose sight of pedestrians in these conversations.

They account for about a third of all road deaths nationally. Currently, Traffitech can’t fine a pedestrian. Nor does a photograph of a collision course change the collision course.

What is sorely needed are usable pavements, refuge islands, and raised crossing.

Few would disagree that motorcycles are the biggest blind spot. The NRSA says 226 of Greater Accra’s 420 road deaths in 2025, 54 per cent, involved motorbikes.

In a single July operation against racing on the George Walker Bush Highway near Villaggio, police impounded 71 motorcycles, 26 of them unregistered.

The DVLA says about 5 per cent of all number plates in use are fake, often copied from wrecked cars.

How is Traffitech going to text registered owners when registration records don’t exist? The properly documented motorist thus becomes conveniently billable. While undocumented menaces continue to roam the street, unpoliced.

Meanwhile, many of the deadliest highway behaviours in Accra are not even very susceptible to automated camera enforcement.

A speed gun cannot judge an overtake on a blind bend, fatigue at the wheel or the reason someone swerved. All this takes evidence and judgement, and cannot be delegated to a single speed reading.

The lights are out

Apparently red-light cameras will come later. But some of the issues are comical.

An April 2026 Department of Urban Roads assessment found only 257 of 411 traffic signal installations working. A 2025 survey by the National Safety Campaign found only 13 per cent of traffic lights in Accra and surrounding cities fully functional.

The Roads Minister blames people stripping signal parts for scrap, while the maintenance firms wait for their GH¢40 million.

CUTS found signals near the Apenkwa overpass and the Police Training Academy junction in Tesano shifted out of clear view while the cameras appeared correctly positioned. Total confusion.

The Accra Intelligent Traffic Management System was part of a US$210.6 million China Development Bank loan that Ghana has collected and, as we say in these parts, chopped.

In 2020, its US$100 million traffic contract was handed to Huawei under the Ministry of National Security. Its second phase is 23 per cent complete, held up by legal disputes, with a US$55 million judgement debt attached.

Finding money to keep the rules working is apparently a headache. So, why not just find investors to charge people for flouting those same rules?

Do you know your ringtone?

Traffitech fines are issued in an SMS to the registered car owner. That, naturally, assumes a well-functioning registry with an up-to-date owner phone directory.

Yet, the government’s 2024 PPP report on the Traffitech project found missing owner information in DVLA records and insurance files still stuck with brokers’ phone numbers.

The Police FAQ adds that if you sold your car, you remain liable until the DVLA records the change of ownership and phone number. (By the way, the DVLA will re-register all four million-plus vehicles with new plates between January 2027 and December 2028.)

Until then expect a lot of people to rack up fines without knowing that they are.

Because the registered owner is liable “regardless of who was driving”. And a sixth offence within 24 months can cost a driving licence for at least a year. Whose licence, when several drivers share an owner’s trotro, a rental car or a company fleet?

Trotro drivers typically rent the bus daily from an owner for a fixed “sales” fee and drive harder to make the target. SMS fine notices will go to owners, who will be saddled with the headaches of appeals in a chaotic system.

To dispute or appeal, the owner must start online within 14 days, choose an MTTD station, wait for an appointment, and then a court hearing is scheduled.

The FAQ says that while they contest a fine, owners will continue to owe the fine plus any accumulated late penalty. There is no deadline for the police to resolve a dispute/appeal.

Faced with a small wrong fine, a rational person compares the cost of capitulation with the cost of vindication. The law-abiding will almost always capitulate. The rascals will take their chances.

The deterrence against failure to pay is that the DVLA will not process licence renewal, registration, transfer or roadworthiness inspection.

Once again, something likely to pinch law-abiding citizens whilst those who bribe their way through shrug it off. But the logic itself is questionable.

We want unsafe vehicles inspected. So we will refuse to inspect them until a fine debt is cleared. Making the safety inspection part of the collateral in a collection dispute is a remarkable way to protect road users.

The scam story is almost comic. Police arrested seven people in February for sending fake fine notices with payment links.

The Police FAQ now warns that any message with a clickable link is likely a scam. Yet the launch briefing said every genuine notice comes with a link to the video evidence. How?

The Money Factor

Much of the confusion stems from the fact that a big part of the whole ensemble is about money. Which also explains why the infrastructure is an afterthought.

Traffitech-GH is a public-private partnership signed in December 2022 with Nationwide Traffic Management and Enforcement Ltd (NTMEL), 60 per cent owned by entrepreneur Frank Osei and 40 per cent by the Swedish-listed Sensys Gatso.

The commercial commitment came three years before Parliament passed the December 2025 amendment that made automated fines lawful.

The Ministry of Finance anticipates a revenue split of 40 per cent to the private party and 60 per cent to government, and its 2022 report lists “revenues from traffic fines for Government” among the benefits to maximise.

Sensys Gatso has told its investors to expect about SEK 600 million in joint-venture revenue over the remaining term, roughly US$60 million, and says the programme now enters “a ramp-up period requiring additional investment”.

Do the sums. If that is the operator’s 40 per cent, Ghanaians must pay about US$150 million in fines by 2033. At the September rate of GH¢11.55 to the dollar, that is roughly GH¢1.7 billion, or about 7 million speeding tickets at GH¢240. Basic arithmetics say we need at least 2,700 fines a day, every day, for seven years.

That obviously is the easy part: squeezing citizens for their hard-earned cash. The problem is that this motive will often clash with common sense. Every fine prevented by a clearer sign, a working traffic/street light or a redesigned junction is money lost to highly motivated investors looking to cash in on a highly lucrative contract.

Economists and others have a term for this: perverse incentives. If the scheme succeeds at safety, drivers comply, violations fall and the business model weakens, which then makes the whole project unsustainable.

The operator’s interest and the public’s interest now point in opposite directions. The American federal guide on speed cameras insists that vendors should not even be involved in selecting sites, “to avoid any real or perceived influence on program revenues”. In Ghana, the vendor is the operator.

The Police have already presented September’s figures (crashes down from 1,108 to 1,003, deaths from 243 to 224 against September 2025) as a pilot achievement. The problem here is that we have only the Police’s word for it, and right now it is an interested party.

Independent bodies are much too under-resourced to collect their own statistics. It is thus not too surprising that the stats offered up by the Police do not include any data on enforced sites against comparable untreated ones, false notices, and overturned tickets alongside.

An eleven-year concession needs an evaluation system capable of reporting on failures.

Perhaps wishful thinking when independent bodies are being starved of resources whilst interested parties collect evaluation data.

In 2025, as road deaths climbed to a 35-year high, the National Road Safety Authority blamed the rise partly on its own inactivity, as it lacked the resources even to run campaigns. The state basically has no resources to fund its safety regulator.

Priority sequencing

Sensys Gatso likes to invoke Vision Zero, the Swedish road-safety philosophy. But how really does Sweden do it? Its transport administration runs a policy of “no hidden cameras”, with road signs and speed signs before each camera site, and credits the cameras with cutting fatalities by 20 to 30 per cent at the sites.

The notice goes to the driver identified from the photograph while the owner is only asked who was driving. Ghana has imported the Swedish camera business with rather less enthusiasm for the Swedish obligations of the road authority or respect for Sweden’s capacity to run a sophisticated automated fining system.

Uganda’s version, with a reported 80 per cent cut for its operator, was suspended within days after it became clear that the country simply wasn’t ready infrastructure-wise.

But credit where credit is due: Accra does have a home-grown model. At the Holy Spirit Cathedral intersection, the city repainted markings, narrowed the junction, lowered kerbs, installed speed-limit signs and fixed bollards to stop motorcycles riding through crossings. Clearly, Ghana can get stuff done when serious people commit to it.

So here is a more sensible order of work.

Link enforcement to impact. Put clearly signposted cameras, including average-speed systems, on the intercity corridors where most of the killings occur, and in the key urban hotspots. Publish a risk map and let transparent deployment align for everyone to see.

This will build trust, not least with the transport unions like GPRTU whose members will bear the brunt of this system.

Sign before you fine. No automated ticket on any segment without a posted speed limit, in km/h, besides the camera.

Switch the lights on. Pay the maintenance firms, finish the signal system already financed, and make every red-light camera conditional on a working, visible traffic light signal. And while at it, fix the street lights too.

Fix the physical mess along with the behavioral mess. Clear and protect bus stops, as the unions demand and the law requires. Copy the Holy Spirit Cathedral redesign along the deadly corridors.

Make motorcycle registration, visible plates, proper helmets and impaired-driving checks central, and create a model where police are stationed at priority hotspots.

Fix the contract. First, publish the contract for public scrutiny. Second, pay the operator an audited service fee with performance conditions, so that improved compliance will not undermine its income.

Publish calibration certificates and clear rules to ensure no abuse of camera feed and car movement data. . Site-level outcomes must be openly published every quarter.

Ensure fairness. An independently adjudicated first appeal should be possible online, and the penalty clock should be frozen within the set determination period.

A proper driver registry needs to be worked on to ensure that notices go to the actual driver. Roadworthiness inspections should not be held hostage to fine arrears

Accra’s road chaos must continue to be treated as a pure problem to be solved. Noone must be allowed to turn it into a cashcow to milk. My bet, as ever with katanomics, is that if the elite behave as they always do, the cashcow is it. But I would very much like to lose that bet.