- Ghana Has Spent Three Decades Chasing Stability Without Transforming the Economy — Prof. Bokpin
Ghana has spent more than three decades repeatedly trying to restore macroeconomic stability without successfully converting periods of stability into sustained productivity, employment and structural transformation, according to Professor Godfred Bokpin of the University of Ghana Business School.
His argument challenges one of the dominant narratives in Ghana’s economic policymaking since the beginning of the Fourth Republic: that lower inflation, a stable currency, fiscal consolidation and debt sustainability should themselves be regarded as evidence of economic success. For Prof. Bokpin, those indicators are important, but they represent the foundation of development rather than development itself.
“Since 1992, every budget has talked about macroeconomic stability, which is not an end in itself but a means to an end,” he has argued, questioning why Ghana remains preoccupied with rebuilding essentially the same economic foundations after more than three decades. His concern is that periods of stability have repeatedly failed to produce the structural changes necessary to make subsequent economic crises less likely.
The criticism is particularly relevant as Ghana emerges from another period of severe macroeconomic dislocation following its 2022 debt crisis. The latest IMF-supported programme has delivered substantial stabilisation gains, including lower inflation, improved external buffers, progress with debt restructuring and greater confidence in the cedi, according to the Fund.
Prof. Bokpin does not dismiss those achievements. He recently described the government’s decision to maintain fiscal consolidation through 2026 as reassuring, arguing that policy predictability and discipline are necessary to preserve confidence while the economy completes its adjustment.
His concern is what happens next. Ghana has repeatedly stabilised after crises, only for fiscal pressures, weak revenue mobilisation, election-cycle spending and limited productive transformation to eventually undermine those gains and return the country to another adjustment programme.
That is why Prof. Bokpin insists stability must become the starting point for a different economic strategy. “Stability is not an end but a foundation,” he has said, arguing that Ghana must move from stability towards resilience and then into structural and productivity transformation.
The distinction is economically important. Inflation can fall while households remain unemployed, the currency can stabilise while businesses struggle to access affordable credit, and fiscal deficits can narrow while public investment in roads, irrigation, energy and industrial infrastructure remains insufficient.
A country can therefore achieve impressive macroeconomic indicators without fundamentally improving the productive capacity of its economy. That gap between statistical stability and lived economic transformation has been central to Prof. Bokpin’s criticism of Ghana’s development model.
He has similarly challenged the country’s emphasis on headline GDP growth, arguing that economic expansion should be evaluated according to whether it produces employment and improves living standards. In 2024, he questioned why Ghana continued to celebrate growth that did not necessarily translate into development experienced by ordinary households.
That concern has become sharper in 2026. Prof. Bokpin has described Ghana’s failure to establish explicit employment targets within its macroeconomic framework as a major policy weakness, arguing that governments cannot expect growth automatically to generate jobs if resource allocation is not deliberately directed towards labour-intensive sectors.
The argument raises a difficult question for policymakers: what exactly is macroeconomic stability supposed to deliver? If lower inflation and fiscal discipline do not eventually generate investment, productive employment, higher incomes and stronger domestic industries, stability risks becoming an economic cycle Ghana repeatedly restores rather than a platform from which it develops.
This is particularly important because stabilisation frequently involves difficult expenditure restraint. Government can reduce deficits partly by containing spending, but excessive reliance on expenditure compression may weaken capital investment and ultimately limit the productive transformation required to expand future revenues.
Prof. Bokpin has warned against precisely that outcome, arguing that fiscal consolidation driven predominantly by spending cuts can eventually become self-defeating. His position is that Ghana must strengthen revenue mobilisation while creating fiscal space for growth-enhancing investment rather than making austerity a permanent development strategy.
The structural weakness can also be seen in Ghana’s export economy. Despite successive industrialisation programmes, the country continues to depend heavily on primary commodities, leaving growth, foreign-exchange earnings and public revenues vulnerable to international commodity cycles.
Prof. Bokpin has previously observed that many of the fundamental problems diagnosed in modern economic strategies resemble those identified decades ago. Agriculture, value addition, industrialisation, infrastructure and export diversification repeatedly appear in national development plans, but implementation has remained inconsistent across political administrations.
This helps explain Ghana’s recurring relationship with the IMF. Stabilisation programmes can impose fiscal discipline, strengthen reserves and restore confidence, but they cannot substitute permanently for domestic institutions capable of maintaining those disciplines after external monitoring recedes.
Prof. Bokpin has therefore supported Ghana’s transition towards a Policy Coordination Instrument following the current IMF financing programme, seeing continued policy discipline as one way of protecting the gains already made. But he has also warned that such external frameworks cannot replace deeper domestic reform.
The real transition Ghana must make is from crisis management to economic transformation. That means using the present period of relative stability to raise productivity in agriculture, strengthen manufacturing, expand value addition, improve infrastructure and deliberately create employment.
It also requires greater continuity across governments. Development becomes difficult when every administration introduces new flagship programmes while the structural objectives — competitive production, stronger institutions, export diversification and job creation — remain broadly unchanged.
Prof. Bokpin’s critique therefore goes beyond the performance of any one administration. His argument spans the Fourth Republic and questions an economic model in which governments repeatedly celebrate stabilisation after crises without sufficiently addressing why instability keeps returning.
The danger is that Ghana could once again emerge successfully from an IMF programme, enjoy several years of improving indicators and then recreate the fiscal and structural imbalances that necessitate another adjustment.
After more than three decades of the Fourth Republic, the question is no longer whether Ghana knows how to stabilise an economy. Its repeated adjustment programmes demonstrate that it does.
The harder question raised by Prof. Bokpin is whether the country can finally use stability to build something durable on top of it an economy that produces more, exports more value-added goods, creates enough productive jobs and becomes sufficiently resilient that restoring macroeconomic stability no longer has to remain the defining objective of every generation of economic policy.
