while ruralurban disparities are still significant there are signs that ghana s cities are facing considerable challenges with land use infrastructure and services provision particularly with regard to housing sanitation and transportation and the absence of gainful and productive employment opportunities especially for the youth the critical policy challenge has been to ensure orderly and sustainable spatial development coordination and planning and measures to enable metropolitan and municipal authorities to secure adequate financing for infrastructure and services the culprit was the ebola epidemic that struck the subregion especially guinea sierra leone and liberia between december and december other contributing factors included a waitandsee approach to governance in the runup to the october presidential election and the adverse international economic outlook which hurt the prices of export goods