The head of Ghana’s leading business advocacy group has argued that the country’s most persistent development problem is not a shortage of good ideas but a sustained failure to carry them out.
Mark Badu-Aboagye, Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana National Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GNCCI), made the remarks on PM Express on Joy News on Tuesday, pointing to a pattern he said has repeated itself across successive administrations.
“Well-documented policies, well-articulated policies, but implementation has always been the challenge. The things that he said about the 24-Hour Economy and 1D1F all need a private sector to implement them,” he said.
Mr Badu-Aboagye cited the One District One Factory (1D1F) initiative as a case in point, describing it as a genuinely strong concept that fell short at the delivery stage. He estimated that if just half of the programme had been executed as designed, the country’s current unemployment pressures would have been substantially reduced.
His concern extended to the current administration’s 24-Hour Economy policy under the National Democratic Congress (NDC). He acknowledged the idea is well thought through but questioned what concrete incentives are being provided to attract private sector participation beyond political rhetoric.
Mr Badu-Aboagye was emphatic that no administration can resolve unemployment through government hiring alone, noting that the public sector accounts for only 6 percent of the country’s total labour force, with the remaining 94 percent employed by the private sector. He said this reality makes it essential for policymakers to focus on creating conditions for businesses to expand rather than treating job creation as a government responsibility.
He also raised questions about whether the financing mechanisms built into previous programmes reached the intended beneficiaries, suggesting that political considerations may have distorted access to funds under 1D1F.
Mr Badu-Aboagye said engagement between the GNCCI and policymakers on the 24-Hour Economy is ongoing, but insisted that consultation without a credible delivery framework risks repeating the same cycle.