Access to basic infrastructure services in Ghanaian local government: a contextual approach

This study aims to empirically examine whether alternative combinations of economic and institutional conditions influence access to sanitation, drinking water and electricity services in Ghana using fuzzy clustering and regression analysis. Drawing on secondary data from 2021, five clusters of local government districts are identified: big, wealthy urban districts; rural, poor districts; middling districts; small districts and badly managed districts. The cluster membership scores for all districts are included in hierarchical regressions predicting access to sanitation, drinking water and electricity services. The main findings from this analysis are that big, wealthy, urban districts are associated with good infrastructure, whereas rural, poor districts and badly managed districts are associated with weak infrastructure access. To distribute infrastructure services more widely, initiatives addressing the economic disadvantages experienced by poor, rural communities and efforts to improve local public administration quality are needed.