E-permitting in Ghana: Navigating the Sub-Saharan building regulatory environment

• Ghana grapples with problems of adherence to building codes and digital literacy. • E-permitting reduces delays in construction approvals. • Permit regulatory loopholes impede safe and sustainable urban growth. • Key drivers for e-permitting include financing models and digital infrastructures. • BIM-GIS integration is the best e-permitting system for Sub-Saharan countries. Over the past decade, population growth coupled with the consequential rapid rural-urban transitional development has led to Sub-Saharan Africa being one of the highest emerging economies undertaking building permitting reforms. Although studies recognise Ghana as one of the four countries in the Sub-Saharan region with updated building regulatory reforms in the last decade, the manual nature of its building permit system continues to be challenging and time-consuming, often undermining compliance. This paper explores the current building permitting terrain in Ghana, highlighting systemic inefficiencies and evaluating the drivers for a shift to electronic permitting. The paper further reviews the types of e-permitting as catalogued by scholars and collects the views of 41 experts selected by the purposive and snowball sampling method to identify the most suitable type for Ghana’s regulatory environment. Findings showed that the cumbersome manual involvement in building permitting systems continues to headline the building regulatory environment. The study also revealed the availability of robust technological structure, user-friendly interface, standardisation, financing models, and aligned regulatory frameworks as primary enablers for private and public stakeholders to fully leverage the e-permitting building system. Owing to the practical realities of the building permitting system in the Sub-Saharan region, particularly Ghana, experts advise Building Information Modelling-Geographical Information System (BIM-GIS) as the most viable solution for Ghana’s regulatory environment due to its cost efficiency, scalability, and ability for real-time spatial analysis. This study informs discourses around smart governance and sustainable urbanity in Sub-Saharan Africa by providing a pathway for transitioning towards digital enablement for permitting.