On 9 April 2019, Ghana's Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, and Health Minister, Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, signed and submitted a joint memorandum to Parliament for approval.
The request was specific and, on paper, straightforward: approve €70 million in financing to construct a new Eastern Regional Hospital in Koforidua, to save the ageing facility that has served Ghanaians in the region since 1926.
The memorandum broke the money down into two credit agreements: a €60.24 million facility backed by UK Export Finance, and a €17.68 million tied commercial facility.
The plan attached to that signature was an ambitious 600-bed hospital. Seven operating theatres. Radiation therapy and oncology, cardiology, nephrology, a dedicated burns unit. Teaching facilities to train medical cadres. Staff accommodation for the personnel who would eventually run the place.
Artistic impression of the Eastern Regional Hospital
It also included sixteen two-bedroom flats, ten three-bedroom flats, eight four-bedroom flats, and twelve one-bedroom ensuite units for staff. There was also construction of roads, drainage, boreholes, and solar backup power.
The memorandum promised completion within three years, from 2019 to 2021, with Tyllium U.K. Ltd. named as lead contractor.
Parliament approved it. The loan was, per the memorandum, already on the list of projects cleared for non-concessional borrowing under an IMF programme 2019.
On 22 July 2020, the fanfare arrived. Then President Akufo-Addo travelled to Koforidua to cut the sod for Phase One, 285 of the planned 600 beds, in a ceremony that, by its nature, is designed to mark a beginning rather than guarantee an end.
President Akufo-Addo was precise about the terms he expected the contractor to meet: the project, he said, must "be completed within the thirty-six (36) month period and on budget." Thirty-six months from a July 2020 groundbreaking put the deadline at July 2023.
That deadline came and went without a hospital.
By December 2023, five months past the promised completion date, the story had turned from delay to abandonment. Contractors Tyllium U.K. Ltd and Ellipse Projects walked off the site entirely, citing unpaid funds.
Subcontractors handling electrical work and plastering stopped soon after. Workers were laid off "until work resumes," a phrase offering no timeline at all. Progress had stalled at roughly 30 percent complete.
Then, in July 2025, President Mahama's "thank you" tour got to the Eastern Region.
At a durbar of chiefs and residents at Jackson Park in Koforidua, another promise was made. President John Mahama told the gathering his government would honour projects begun under the previous administration.
The Omanhene of New Juaben, Daasebre Kwaku Boateng III, whose predecessor had donated the very land the project - Koforidua Regional Hospital sits on, used his welcome remarks to ask the President directly to finish what had been started.
It was a project expected to redefine healthcare delivery in the Eastern Region.
Today, those promises stand in contrast to reality. The road leading to the project site still ends at the imposing concrete structure that dominates the surrounding landscape.
When The Fourth Estate visited the project site on July 26, 2026 - a year after John Mahama’s promise, there was no sign of construction activity. No earth-moving equipment.
No masons. No carpenters. No engineers.
Instead, weeds had taken over.
What was expected to become a busy construction site is now, after the second promise, still being slowly reclaimed by nature. Thick vegetation stretches across sections of the expansive compound, swallowing pathways and creeping toward the entrances of the unfinished hospital
Some of the weeds have grown almost to the height of the building's entrances, making access into parts of the facility difficult without first clearing a path.
By the side of the facility, forty-foot shipping containers sit where the contractors left them, some still locked, weeds climbing their flanks. They were meant to be temporary but have become permanent tenants.
Parliament approved a financing package with a 13-year repayment period for a hospital expected to be completed within three years.
Today, nearly five years into that financing period, the towering concrete structure is left to the mercy of nature, unfinished and unusable. However, the loan clock continues to tick, and soon the taxpayers' money will be used to service this €70 million loan.
The promise that once inspired hope waits, still, to be fulfilled.
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