Power is with the People: Key Issues for Ghana’s Incoming Leadership, Viewed from the Ground

As Ghana enters its seventh set of general elections since multiparty democracy, the vote is largely seen as a two- horse race between incumbent President Nana Akufo-Addo and the New Patriotic Party versus John Dramani Mahama, flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and former president. However, the power of incumbency for the NPP and the fissures within the NDC following the recent demise of the party’s founder will likely put the NPP in the eye of the prize. From our vantage point in Accra though, we’ve reflected on the past four years, having engaged with blue- and white-collar workers, informal workers, students and those looking for work across the country. As the electorate decides who should come into power today, there are some key issues that people at the grassroots are most concerned about, which we’ve clustered into four categories: political, economic, supply chain and security risk.

 Political Risk – Corruption- national & local level, gender balance

Corruption perception - national level. Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index shows that Ghana’s corruption scorecard over the past few years falls short.“In 2017, it recorded the worst performance with an average score of 40 out of 100 and rose marginally to 41 in 2018 and maintained that figure in 2019[1]”.This has translated into a lack of trust in government promises on the ground. A construction worker from the Ashanti Region laments that the government’s promise of allocating USD1m to each constituency - under the Infrastructure for Poverty Eradication Programme (IPEP) – was overly ambitious: “it’s easy to make promises before coming to power, it’s another thing to deliver on them”. 

Corruption perception - local level. Referring to property taxes which are paid on immovable property, a driver/electrician, perceives that local authorities poorly administer the funds they collect: “all they’re interested in is the property rate. They’re meant to use that money to develop the localities but they don’t”. This was echoed by a hotelier from the Western Region who bemoaned being slapped with a property rate bill which bore no resemblance to what was owed: “first I was given a bill of GHS62,000 just before Covid, when I challenged it, the bill was reduced to GHS2,000. Then suddenly a bill came again, for GHS65,000. When I went back to challenge the Municipal Chief Executive I was told that I could just ‘pay what I could afford and that would be fine’”.

Gender balance. Ghana has three female presidential aspirants in the elections: Akua Donkor of the Ghana Freedom Party, Brigitte Dzogbenuku of the Progressive People’s Party (PPP), and Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, of the National Democratic Party (NDP), former first lady for almost two decades and founder of the 31stDecember Women’s movement. There is also, for the first time, a woman as a vice-presidential candidate in the elections, Professor Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, the first female vice chancellor of the University of Cape Coast and running mate to Mahama. While an Accra- based senior executive believes, along with several other actors we engaged with, that there are no issues relating to the competence of a would-be female president, Ghana still remains fiercely patriarchal, with only 14% female representation in parliament, for instance[2]. 

Economic Risk - fiscal management, education, agriculture, healthcare, Covid-related business support.

Fiscal management. Ghana is in a precarious position with its debt-to-GDP ratio having exceeded 70%, and a current fiscal deficit of 9% of GDP expected to reach 11% of GDP this year. Whilea portion of this can be attributed to Covid-19 related spending, the situation was far from perfect before the pandemic. Questions abound as to how debt can be serviced and tamed going into 2021, especially as the expectation on the ground is for project and policy continuity, particularly in relation to backbone services.

Education. Through the government’s flagship free Senior High School (SHS) education, students attend the 630 public sector high schools and 47 vocational schools for free. Yet the double-track system, in which students rotate attending school every two months to accommodate the rise in numbers, has had an impact on parents and teachers alike. A teacher in the Volta Region shared how they are challenged by “inadequate classrooms, micromanaging of every sector of the education system, the government’s inability to provide prescribed textbooks after promising to do same and the unavailability of logistics”.

Agriculture. Government’s Planting for Food and Jobs agriculture policy was introduced in 2017 to strengthen agriculture and increase food security by introducing initiatives to stimulate production, improve efficiency and reduce a dependency on imports. Ghana is now positioned 59thout of 113 countries on the Global Food Security Index, up 19 places since 2016[3]. 

Healthcare. According to the Centre for Democratic Development, Ghana has “a Health Access Coefficient of 39.3%, meaning 69.7% of our citizens are without adequate health access”[4]. This was echoed by a nurse from the Central Region who is concerned that the absence of proper resource allocation “exposes tax-paying Ghanaians to financial hardships or even being tipped into poverty when they do fall sick”.

Supply Chain Risk – Covid impact, job creation, skills development & road safety

Covid impact. The Covid-19 pandemic led to the closure of “35.7% of businesses …during the partial lockdown, with firms in the accommodation and food sector being the most affected[5]”. A hotelier in Greater Accra shared how this year has almost been a write- off “because things were bad, totally bad”.

Job creation. There is ample evidence that the Ghanaian economy even pre-COVID struggled to produce adequate jobs in the formal sectoryet the need is acute, in Ghana and the wider continent as a whole. As an example, one may note how it has become the norm for graduates to have to spend 1-2 years searching for a job upon completion of their studies. The current administration has launched schemes (National Builders Corps or NABCO, and PFJ) said to have created hundreds of thousands of jobs. However, there are concerns about the actual level of productivity and therefore their sustainability.

Skills development is often cited as an area where both the public and private sectors should join hands to ensure a more productive and energised workforce, particularly with entrepreneurs who are effectively forced to learn on the job. Yet interestingly, a stakeholder within oil and gas shared how there has been an improvement in the quality of Ghanaian personnel in the sector, “which has paved the way for foreign energy companies to sign training agreements for their staff to be trained by us at a fee”.

Road safety. The government may have declared 2020 “The Year of Roads” but by the end of August 2020, the National Road Safety Authority “recorded 9,205 road crashes, involving 15,459 vehicles, resulting in 1,585 deaths”, representing an increase of 0.34% from the previous year[6]. Virtually all the 35 people we spoke with alluded to road safety as a key concern and road quality a major operational hurdle.

 Security Risk – robberies, security agencies, inter-ethnic & cross-border tensions.

Robberies. In 2017, the Ghana Police Service recorded that there had been 1772 reported cases of robberies, an increase of 27% from the previous year[7]. A construction worker in the Ashanti Region shared how the police stations aren’t proximate, “sometimes people have to go 2-3 miles before they reach a station” and as such, there’s a reliance on the community to “protect ourselves”. 

Security agencies. The lack of confidence in the police, customs and immigration, is well documented, and was widely viewed as the achilles heel of security enforcement among the people we engaged with. This was particularly true for the police, who have cultivated a reputation for bribe-taking and a lackadaisical attitude towards pressing issues[8].

Inter-ethnic & cross-border tensions. In terms of ethnic, religious or political conflict, Ghana compares favourably with regional peers. Nevertheless, we have seen a small escalation in tribal tensions, especially in the Volta region where a secessionist group attempted to claim independence earlier this year. The deterioration of the security situation in Burkina Faso is also a concern given the relatively porous border that the two countries share. 

Outlook

Whoever emerges as the winner of Ghana’s elections, there are fundamental expectations from the grassroots, many of which transcend political hue.  The electorate will want to see the incoming government address governance challenges and close the gap on the gender divide in leadership – from the national to regional and local government levels. Economically, government will be between a rock and a hard place in trying to bring down public spending while ensuring project continuity/ strengthening backbone services. Greater confidence in the security agencies will only occur with a concerted effort to reduce cronyism, which would go some distance to reduce vigilantism, armed attacks and cross- border tensions. Operationally, better roads are critical, as is job creation, particularly in a more volatile climate in which we all now live. An increasingly discerning populace means a strengthening of the knowledge economy and greater scrutiny of government policies. So a failure by the incoming government to take cognisance of these issues will be repaid in kind- at best, at the ballot box in four years’ time.

We are an African-owned and managed firm delivering local knowledge in support of transformative and sustainable economic outcomes in the region. To learn more about any of the topics in this piece or to find out more about us, please don’t hesitate to get in touch: questions@songhaidvisory.com We would love to hear from you!

[1]http://www.arapghana.eu/news/ghana-maintains-score-on-corruption-perception-index

[2]https://nai.uu.se/news-and-events/news/2020-12-03-a-step-forward-but-no-guarantee-of-gender-friendly-policies-female-candidates-sparks-hope-in-the-2020-ghanaian-elections.html

[3]https://foodsecurityindex.eiu.com/index

[4]https://www.cddgh.org/rethinking-our-strategy-towards-health-investment-and-delivery-the-2020-budget/

[5]https://statsghana.gov.gh/covidtracker/Business%20Tracker%20Brief%20Report_GSS_web.pdf

[6]https://newsghana.com.gh/ghana-records-1585-road-crash-deaths-by-end-of-august-2020/

[7]https://www.modernghana.com/news/952892/the-spate-of-crime-in-ghana-is-very-disturbing.html

[8]http://apanews.net/en/news/ghana-fight-against-police-corruption-signing-of-performance-contract-grab-media-headlines/