In 2017 the president of Ghana announced a National Cathedral for Accra, describing it as the fulfilment of a personal vow made before the election. The design was commissioned from David Adjaye, the site was cleared of judges' bungalows near the seat of government, and construction began.
The objections were not principally theological, and several of the sharpest came from Christians. Ghana's constitution does not establish a religion, and the state was proposing to build a place of worship for one faith in a country with a large Muslim minority and a substantial traditional religious population. Public money was committed, initially presented as seed funding on the expectation that Christians would fund the rest, and the amounts disclosed rose over time. Parliamentary scrutiny and investigative reporting raised questions about procurement, about payments made to consultants and about the accounting of donations, and the trustees changed. Building stopped, leaving a very large excavated pit in central Accra that became a standing visual argument in Ghanaian politics.
The wider issue the project exposed is the entanglement of the charismatic churches with the state. Prominent pastors carry political weight, government functions open with extended Christian prayer, and clergy were among the principal public backers of the anti LGBT legislation pressed through parliament in this period. Ghana's Muslim leadership and its traditional authorities have generally been included in state ceremonial, but the cathedral asked a different question: not who is invited, but what the state itself is for.
The project remains unfinished, and its status has been a live matter in successive budget debates.