Ghana’s bold 24-hour economy ambition is a welcome vision, but our procurement architecture is trapped in a 9-to-5 mindset. Without urgent legislative and institutional reform, we risk either strangling the policy in red tape or quietly gutting the accountability safeguards Ghanaians fought to establish.
THE STORY: A DOCTOR, A DYING MACHINE, AND A BUREAUCRACY THAT SLEEPS
It is 10 PM on a Saturday. A dialysis machine at a major Ghanaian teaching hospital has just failed. Without replacement, patients could die within 24 hours. The procurement officer on duty knows exactly what is needed, knows a supplier who can deliver Sunday morning, and knows the cost fits the budget. There is only one problem: the tender committee cannot meet until Tuesday.
That officer spent Saturday night in a panic of phone calls, not solving a clinical emergency, but trying to navigate a procurement system designed for Monday-to-Friday, eight-to-five operations. The patients survived. But as this procurement officer later put it: ‘It shouldn’t be that hard to save lives.’
This story is not isolated. Across Ghana’s public sector, from hospitals and road agencies to utilities and district assemblies, procurement officers are quietly improvising workarounds for a system that was never built to support continuous government operations. And now, the government is asking for that same system to power a 24-hour economy.
AUTHOR’S PERSPECTIVE
I have spent over a decade reviewing procurement documents at the Ministry of Roads and Highways and its agencies, like DFR, and I can tell you this with confidence: the gap between Ghana’s 24-hour economy ambition and the capacity of our procurement architecture to support it is not a gap; it is a chasm. I am not saying this to discourage the policy. Quite the opposite. I am saying it because I believe the 24-hour economy can genuinely transform this country, but only if we are honest about what reforms it demands, and courageous enough to carry them through.
THE POLICY AMBITION AND THE SILENT ASSUMPTION
President John Mahama’s administration has rekindled the 24-hour economy vision with considerable energy. The logic is compelling: hospitals with full night-time diagnostic capacity, ports that never pause, factories running triple shifts, government services available around the clock. Countries like South Korea, Singapore, and even Kenya have demonstrated real gains from this model.
What the policy documents tend to gloss over, and this is where procurement professionals like me must speak plainly, is that running government around the clock is not simply about leaving lights on and adding staff shifts. It means fundamentally rethinking how public institutions function, particularly in areas where time-bound oversight protocols serve as our main defence against corruption and waste.
And perhaps no area embeds these temporal assumptions more deeply than public procurement.
Ghana’s Public Procurement Act 2003 (Act 663), as strengthened by the 2016 amendments (Act 914), is a genuinely impressive piece of legislation. It has earned international recognition for its alignment with global best practices. But it was written for a country that procures during daylight hours, in office buildings, with committees that meet on scheduled Thursdays.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE SUN GOES DOWN
A study on Public Procurement Reforms for the Night Economy: Policy, Governance and Accountability in Ghana, brings systematic evidence to this question for the first time. Drawing on a detailed analysis of Act 663/914 and in-depth interviews with fifteen (15) procurement practitioners, auditors, civil society monitors, and senior officials, the findings are sobering.
The research identifies five categories of legal bottlenecks that directly undermine after-hours procurement:
First, tender advertisement periods are measured in calendar days but assume publication during business hours, and effectiveness depends on potential bidders seeing the notices, something that happens far less at 11 PM.
Second, tender opening ceremonies legally require physical presence, but scheduling a public opening for midnight is practically absurd.
Third, approval committees meet only on scheduled business-day slots; invoking emergency provisions requires substantial justification and frantic calls that should not be necessary for foreseeable operational needs.
Fourth, site inspections for public projects almost always happen during daylight, so bidders on night-time infrastructure contracts are, in the words of one construction company CEO interviewed, ‘bidding blind on conditions we will actually face.’
Fifth, complaint mechanisms operate entirely within office hours, so by the time a civil society monitor could flag an irregular after-hours decision, the contract might already be awarded and work begun.
“We had a dialysis machine fail at 10 PM on a Saturday. Complete failure. Without intervention, we’d lose patients within 24 hours. I knew exactly what we needed, knew a supplier who could get it Sunday morning, and knew the cost was within our budget. But legally? Our tender committee wouldn’t meet until Tuesday.” Procurement Officer, Major Teaching Hospital (Respondent MIN-04)
THE CORRUPTION QUESTION NOBODY WANTS TO ASK
Here is the uncomfortable truth that policymakers need to hear: extending procurement operations into the night without first building the corresponding oversight infrastructure does not just create bureaucratic inconvenience. It creates a corruption opportunity of significant proportions.
“Corruption happens more easily when fewer people are watching and participating. Night operations, unless very carefully structured, create those conditions.” Civil Society Procurement Monitor (Respondent CSO-15)
Research by Lassou and colleagues (2024) on the monetisation of politics and procurement in Ghana describes how political financing pressures systematically create incentives to steer contracts toward supporters. That dynamic does not disappear at night. What disappears at night is the oversight that keeps it in check.
AUTHOR’S PERSPECTIVE
I want to be careful not to be misread here. I am not saying that procurement officers are corrupt, or that the 24-hour economy will inevitably breed corruption. The vast majority of procurement professionals I have worked with are dedicated public servants doing an enormously difficult job under significant resource constraints. What I am saying is that systems, not just individuals, create conditions for integrity or dishonesty. Right now, we are contemplating expanding operations into a time window where our systems provide almost no structural protection. That is a policy risk that deserves presidential-level attention.
THE CAPACITY PROBLEM: WE CANNOT SUPERVISE WHAT WE CANNOT STAFF
The second crisis hiding inside the 24-hour economy plan is an institutional capacity gap so severe that it makes the legal bottlenecks look modest by comparison.
Consider the numbers. The Public Procurement Authority has roughly 120 staff nationally to oversee more than 5,000 procurement entities. That is one PPA staff member for every 42 entities, and that is during standard business hours. To provide 24-hour oversight would, in the assessment of PPA’s own senior management, require at least tripling the current workforce. That is not a budget line; it is a structural transformation.
At the entity level, the picture is even more concerning. The research finds that 68 percent of procurement entities report insufficient staff for their current standard-hours workload. Small and medium district assemblies often manage with a single part-time procurement officer handling everything from planning to evaluation to contract management. The idea of running night shifts in these offices is not just impractical; it is fanciful without a fundamental redesign of how procurement is staffed and organised in Ghana.
Technology could bridge some of this gap, but the infrastructure baseline is shockingly thin. Only 12 percent of entities have any form of integrated procurement management system. Forty-three percent report frequent internet or electricity interruptions that disrupt even basic operations. GHANEPS, Ghana’s e-government procurement portal, exists and has made genuine progress, but its adoption at the operational level remains inconsistent, particularly outside Greater Accra.
AUTHOR’S PERSPECTIVE
I say this as someone who sat in procurement review committees regularly: we cannot supervise what we cannot staff, and we cannot automate what we have not yet digitised. Before we extend procurement operations into the night, we must extend our capacity to watch over those operations. The two must move together. Doing one without the other is like installing a highway before building the traffic lights.
WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN: A THREE-PRONGED REFORM AGENDA
The good news is that this is a solvable problem. The research proposes a comprehensive reform agenda built around three reinforcing tracks. I endorse this framework not merely as a researcher, but as a practitioner who lives inside these systems every working day.
Track 1: Legislative Amendments (Immediate 0 to 12 Months)
Act 663/914 needs an urgent surgical amendment to introduce what legal scholars would call ‘temporal flexibility provisions.’ Specifically, we need a new Section 18B that formally authorises procurement activities outside standard business hours, defines conditions under which this is permissible, establishes clear delegation protocols, mandates contemporaneous digital documentation, and requires notification of the PPA within 24 hours of any after-hours procurement decision.
Section 18A on e-procurement needs to be upgraded to mandate 24-hour portal access, live-streaming of all tender openings, digital signatures with full legal standing, and real-time transaction logging with tamper-evident audit trails. Section 45 on tender opening must explicitly permit virtual attendance equivalent to physical presence.
These amendments are not radical departures from existing procurement law. They are logical extensions of principles already present in Act 914. Parliament needs to act on them before the 24-hour economy policy moves into full implementation.
Track 2: Technology Infrastructure (Medium Term; 12 to 24 Months)
Ghana needs a significant investment in e-procurement infrastructure, the research estimates GH₵ 90 to 150 million, or roughly USD 5.5 to 9 million at current rates, though some estimates place the national investment requirement as high as USD 25 million for full capability. This is not discretionary spending; it is foundational infrastructure for a 24-hour economy.
Specific investments required include a fully upgraded GHANEPS with continuous availability and mobile accessibility, blockchain-enabled transaction logging to create immutable audit trails for after-hours decisions, real-time monitoring dashboards for PPA and the Auditor-General’s Department, and automated conflict-of-interest checking using relationship mapping tools.
International experiences from South Korea’s KONEPS system, which processes over $60 billion annually through digital procurement, demonstrate that this is achievable. South Korea did not achieve this overnight, but they built it deliberately and funded it adequately. Ghana must make the same commitment.
Track 3: Institutional Restructuring (Medium to Long Term; 24 to 48 Months)
The structural answer to the staffing crisis is not simply hiring more procurement officers, although that is necessary. It is reorganising how procurement services are delivered. The research proposes shift-based procurement cells for large entities, regional procurement hubs in Kumasi, Tamale, Cape Coast, and Takoradi that provide shared services and after-hours oversight capacity to smaller entities in their regions, and a dedicated 24-hour oversight unit within PPA.
Alongside restructuring, we need a comprehensive professionalisation drive. Currently, 58 percent of entity-level procurement officers lack formal certification. The government should partner with the Ghana Institute of Procurement and Supply (GIPS), the Ghana Institute of Surveyors (GhIS), KAAF University, and similar institutions to accelerate certification, create career pathways that attract and retain talent in public procurement, and establish mandatory continuing professional development requirements.
A DIRECT MESSAGE TO THE PRESIDENT, MINISTERS, AND OPINION LEADERS
I want to address the leadership of this country directly, because I believe this is a moment that calls for frank, professional counsel rather than diplomatic hedging.
AUTHOR’S PERSPECTIVE
Mr. President, the 24-hour economy is a worthy vision. I support it. But visions without infrastructure are just aspirations. Ghana has a history of bold policy proclamations that stall at implementation because the foundational systems were not ready. The 24-hour economy must not become another entry in that catalogue. The procurement reform agenda I have outlined here is not optional; it is the operating manual for making your vision work. I respectfully urge you to direct the Ministry of Finance, the Public Procurement Authority, and Parliament to treat these reforms as urgent national infrastructure, not routine regulatory housekeeping.
AUTHOR’S PERSPECTIVE
To the Honourable Ministers of Finance, Roads, Education, Health, and Local Government: your sectors are among the heaviest users of public procurement. The vulnerabilities identified in this research, after-hours corruption exposure, capacity gaps at MMDAs, and inadequate technology are your operational realities, even if they have not yet been named as such. You have the mandate and the platform to champion these reforms in Cabinet. Please use them.
AUTHOR’S PERSPECTIVE
To Ghana’s procurement professionals, civil society monitors, and procurement watchdogs: we have a window of opportunity here. The 24-hour economy conversation has opened a space to demand the institutional investment that Ghana’s procurement architecture has long needed. Let us not waste it. The Ghana Institute of Surveyors (GhIS), Ghana Institute of Procurement and Supply (GIPS), and civil society organisations should be loudly and publicly calling for the legislative amendments and infrastructure investment that will protect procurement integrity as operations expand.
To all readers of this: the public procurement system exists to protect your tax money. Every cedi of inflated contract price, every phantom delivery, every kickback hidden in an emergency procurement, those are your cedis. You have every right to demand that as Ghana’s government expands its operational hours, it also expands the safeguards that keep your money safe.
CONCLUSION: THE GOVERNANCE UPGRADE THAT MATCHES THE AMBITION
Ghana’s 24-hour economy ambition is genuinely exciting. The prospect of a country that leverages its full productive potential, keeps its hospitals at full capacity overnight, and positions its ports as the most efficient logistics gateways in West Africa, that is a future worth building toward.
But the pathway there runs directly through public procurement reform. The evidence assembled in this research is clear: operating our current procurement system around the clock without first upgrading its legal architecture, technological infrastructure, and institutional capacity would almost certainly create a governance crisis. We would be choosing between strangling the 24-hour economy in procedural bottlenecks or quietly dismantling the accountability safeguards our citizens rightfully expect.
Neither outcome is acceptable. There is a third path, and it requires political will, financial commitment, and professional courage. Ghana has demonstrated all three before. We built the legal foundation of modern procurement under Act 663 and Act 914 when it seemed ambitious. We can build the temporal governance framework that the 24-hour economy demands. But we must start now, and we must start deliberately.
AUTHOR’S PERSPECTIVE
I have built my professional life around the belief that public procurement, done well, is one of the most powerful tools a government has for translating public money into public good. Done badly, it is one of the most reliable generators of waste, inequity, and corruption. The 24-hour economy will test Ghana’s procurement governance as it has never been tested before. I am determined to play my part in ensuring we pass that test, and I call on every procurement professional, policymaker, academic, and citizen who cares about Ghana’s development to join that effort.
Surv. Engr. Emmanuel Norgah Bukari (PhD) is Chief Quantity Surveyor at the Procurement Directorate of Ghana’s Ministry of Roads and Highways. He lectures in Procurement and Supply Chain Management at KAAF University, Ghana. Views expressed in this article are entirely his own.
SOURCES: This article draws on the research paper ‘Public Procurement Reforms for the Night Economy: Policy, Governance and Accountability in Ghana’ (2025).
This policy brief is based on peer-reviewed research conducted under the governance of M.S. Ramaiah University of Applied Sciences, Bangalore (India), and is submitted in the public interest.
Findings are grounded in primary qualitative data from 15 expert interviews and doctrinal legal analysis of Ghana’s Public Procurement Act 663/914.
