Ghana
Country snapshot
Authors: Ajoy Datta and Fletcher Tembo. More on scope, methodology and sources.
Economic, social and governance indicators
Ghana’s economy has been growing over the past five years:
- per capita GDP is up from $1,721 to $2,164
- overall GDP up from $47.7 billion to $65.3 billion
- growth rate up from 2.2% to 6.5%
- inflation rate down from 17.1% to 7.9% (Focus Economics)
The Economic Freedom Index 2020 rates the Ghanaian economy as mostly unfree since 2017. Ghana scores 59.4 on the Index, making its economy the 104th freest in the world. The country ranks 11th among 47 countries in the sub-Saharan Africa region and its overall score is well above the regional average and slightly below the world average.
It is crawling back towards the moderately free ranks for the past two years — seen in the acceleration of GDP growth (although much of this derives from the expanding oil and gas sector).
The Index recommends that Ghana stimulate growth in non-oil sectors by strengthening its fiscal health by not taking on additional debt (including from China) and prioritising further improvements in property rights, judicial effectiveness and government integrity.
For the TPA field, there is much work to do — both in contributing to the expansion of non-oil and gas parts of the economy and in increasing transparency and accountability of the oil and gas industry itself.
Overall, Ghana performs well on governance indicators, which provides an enabling environment for interventions in the TPA field:
- The Ibrahim Index of African Governance: rates Ghana’s on transparency and accountability as 45.2 out of 100 — a downward trend over the past five years.
- The World Governance Indicators: give Ghana a rating of 65.5 for voice and accountability performance — an improvement of 1.5 points.
- The Global Corruption Barometer: measures citizen agreement with the statement ‘Ordinary people can make a difference in the fight against corruption’ — puts Ghana at 60, with an overall performance improvement of +7 over the five years.
Political context
Ghana has come to be known as one of the few African countries to have created a strong democracy, with generally peaceful elections and sustained economic growth, respect for human rights, free and fair elections.
However, successive governments in Ghana are associated with weak state capacity to undertake deep structural transformation to enable the wide range of interest groups to effectively contribute to governance and democracy.
President Akufo-Addo, of the NPP, was re-elected in 2020, defeating his predecessor John Mahama of the National Democratic Congress (NDC). These two political parties have dominated Ghanaian politics.
The general elections have always resulted in second-runs or close calls (with wins of just over 50% of the vote). This has resulted in intensive campaigning that has increasingly polarised society. It has also arguably bled into the spaces in between elections and suffocated what could have otherwise been healthy political debates because even civil society has tended to take sides.
Akufo-Addo’s 2016 & 2020 campaigns centred on economic development. He promised to build a Ghana beyond aid, which seeks to create a new social contract between the government and citizens. This social contract would bring together all resources (financial, human etc.) and use them to get things done, with impacts that are inclusive and beyond frameworks of international donors and decision-making institutions.
In September 2020, Akufo-Addo signed the Vigilantism and Related Offences Act, which bans all political and other vigilante groups and assigns penalties of up to 15 years in prison for acts of vigilantism. The practical effects of the new law remain to be seen (Freedom House, 2020).
Politically connected corruption remains a problem in Ghana, despite active media coverage, fairly robust laws and institutions, and government anti-graft initiatives. Legislation adopted in 2017 established the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) to investigate political corruption.
President Akufo-Addo appointed former attorney general Martin Amidu, a member of the opposition NDC, as the special prosecutor in 2018. However, Amidu has complained publicly about the lack of government funding for the OSP’s operations. Since its creation, the OSP has investigated a number of cases, but it has yet to establish a track record of prosecutions targeting public officials (Freedom House, 2020).
In May 2019, Akufo-Addo’s signed the Right to Information Act, which comes after almost two decades of debate, grants citizens the right to seek, access, and receive information from public and some private institutions (Freedom House, 2020).
Private discussion is both free and vibrant. The government does not restrict individual expression on social media. The right to peaceful assembly is constitutionally guaranteed and generally respected. Permits are not required for meetings or demonstrations. The law is intended to foster greater transparency and accountability in public affairs.
In December 2018, Ghana launched the National Anti-Corruption Reporting Dashboard, an online reporting tool to coordinate anti-corruption efforts of various bodies as set out in the National Anti-Corruption Action Plan. A total of 169 governmental and nongovernmental organisations have used the tool to report on their efforts to stem corruption in the country (US State Department, 2019: 14).
Ghana is replete with laws and regulations that create an enabling environment for good governance, but there is now a need to now make these work for greater transparency, participation and accountability between and among societies in Ghana.
Civil society and citizen engagement
NGOs are largely able to operate freely, and play an important role in ensuring government accountability and transparency. Bertelsmann Stiftung’s latest governance analysis of Ghana notes that the country has a relatively well-grounded tradition of civil society, supported by donor assistance and a regulatory framework and political culture that permit freedom of organisations and expression (BTI, 2018).
Civil society groups are outspoken and well trained in using the media to voice opinions and engage with government. Sometimes, however, politicians actively use civil society organisations (CSOs) for their own means (BTI, 2018: 30), and it is not always easy to differentiate between those NGOs that are “independent” and those with strong affiliations to a political party or leading political figure.
Relatively steady economic growth has put money into the hands of a small but consistently growing urban middle class — the traditional backbone of NGOs. In rural areas, more traditional forms of organisation persist. Religious organisations, especially the ever-rising number of Pentecostal and African Independent Churches, with their accompanying institutions, are playing an increasingly important role, including providing essential social services.
Trade unionism, on the other hand, remains relatively weak and is only visible from time to time in organising popular discontent (BTI, 2020: 12). According to government web sources, around 300,000 NGOs are registered with the Ghanaian Ministry of Manpower, Education and Youth, the state’s regulating body, not counting international NGOs (BTI, 2020: 13).
Apart from allowing civil society to operate freely, there is a general sense that the Ghanaian government is opening up to civil society participation. Over the past couple decades, CSOs have evolved from having minimum involvement to becoming active players at various stages of the policymaking cycle.
The government encourages civil society actors to participate in agenda-setting and policy formulation up to a certain level — particularly when it wants to show commitment to transparency or to address certain pressing issues.
The government also engages civil society when it is evident that its support is needed to provide necessary services to the population — such as in the healthcare system. Sometimes, the knowledge of specialised NGOs is used to overcome a lack of expertise in state institutions, especially if they are foreign-funded. In the area of education, the government has also actively encouraged civil society actors to become stakeholders to accelerate the progress of initiated reforms.
Generally, the political elite has come to accept the role of an active civil society, even if the relationship is sometimes strained (BTI, 2020: 33). However, elected politicians and officials in public administration regard criticism or questions by civil society actors as unwarranted and disrespectful.
Whether ministries or other government agencies embrace a culture of openness and engagement with civil society or not ultimately depends on the individuals in those institutions. As noted by the Bertelsmann Stiftung’s governance analysis of Ghana, agenda-setting and strategic planning is determined by powerful individuals, and if a strategy fails to attract the support of a responsible minister it will remain little more than paperwork (BTI, 2018: 26). A similar sentiment was expressed by a representative from SEND-Ghana:
‘In Ghana, the level of government openness is not a problem, it is the quality of the openness that is the problem; that they listen to us and work with us. This often has to do with individuals. Some individuals in ministries are enthusiastic about this and others are not. So, you cannot talk of government as a unified body in that sense.’ (Key informant interview, November 2020)
Citizen engagement is better at the subnational (district or community level) in Ghana. At the national level, some are apathetic, some give up and conclude that all political actors are the same.
Citizens in Ghana also engage through their chiefs, and the National House of Chiefs has been instrumental in promoting a peaceful electoral process that has delivered credible elections. For instance, in 2016 the National House of Chiefs was key in facilitating national cohesion and electoral peace through the signing of another peace pact in Accra (IDEG, 2016). At this forum, presidential candidates pledged to act against all forms of violence that will undermine the credibility and integrity of the elections and its outcomes. This contributed to ensuring collaboration among national political actors to save the nation from the potentially ravaging impact of electoral violence.
