…as Cathedral Probe Stalls
By Gifty Boateng
Sir David Adjaye, the Ghanaian-British architect at the centre of the troubled National Cathedral project, returned to Accra last week to open a lavish new studio.
His arrival coincides with a continuing official silence over alleged multi-million-dollar financial irregularities in the cathedral’s design and mobilisation works.
Adjaye’s new headquarters for Adjaye Associates complete with a bar, crèche, roof-top performance area, and “public mixing room” stands as a statement of low-carbon, post-tension architecture. “This is the first of a kind building in Accra,” he said at the unveiling. The firm already has offices in New York and London.
But the cathedral itself remains a hole in the ground. Once promoted by former president Nana Akufo-Addo as a private-funded “promise to God”, the project has instead absorbed at least GH¢113 million of state funds and possibly more.
A forensic audit ordered. In 2025, the government disclosed an unexplained variance of GH¢4.93 million between official payment records and what Adjaye’s firm reported receiving. According to the Minister Felix Kwakye Ofosu, the Office of the President confirmed total disbursements of GH¢113,040,564.86, but the architect’s firm claimed GH¢117,972,656.00. The difference remains unaccounted for.
The government directed the Auditor-General to conduct a forensic audit. That official, Johnson Asiedu Akuamoah, has since left office, replaced by Pamela Graham. No findings have been published. The Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) also announced it was handling part of the investigation but little has emerged from that quarter either.
Ofori-Atta’s shadow. The cathedral controversy is one reason former finance minister Ken Ofori-Atta remains in self-imposed exile in the United States. He is wanted in Ghana over multiple alleged financial infractions, though no formal charges have yet been filed.
Adjaye, for his part, avoided discussing the cathedral at his studio launch. Instead, he spoke of training young African architects and building “innovative, low energy, high performance buildings of global standard”. His new Accra studio, he said, “redefines what it is to work in the 21st century”.
Unanswered questions. Why has the forensic audit stalled? Why did the state pay a foreign-based architect tens of millions of Ghanaian cedis for a project that never rose above foundation level? And who authorised the payments?
For now, the cathedral remains a monument to broken promises and a potential case of missing millions. Adjaye’s plush new workspace suggests that for the architect, at least, business is booming.