- Manufacturing Leads Ghana’s 2025 Investment Projects as Mining Services Tops FDI Value at US$506.61m
Manufacturing emerged as Ghana’s largest destination for new investment projects in 2025, while mining services attracted the highest value of foreign direct investment, highlighting a sharp difference between where investors are establishing businesses and where the largest pools of capital are being deployed.
The Ghana Investment Promotion Centre now an Authority 2025, Annual Investment Report shows that 99 new manufacturing projects were registered during the year, more than twice the 43 projects recorded in services and almost five times the 20 projects registered in general trade.
But measured by the value of foreign direct investment, mining services led the market with US$506.61 million, despite accounting for only three new projects.
Manufacturing followed with US$368.71 million, while services attracted US$306.36 million and general trade recorded US$226.62 million.
The divergence provides an important insight into Ghana’s investment structure.
Manufacturing is generating the largest number of new projects, suggesting comparatively broad investor interest across industrial activities. Mining services, by contrast, is attracting fewer but significantly larger capital commitments, reflecting the capital-intensive nature of investments linked to Ghana’s extractive industries.
The report describes 2025 as a period in which Ghana’s investment environment began recovering alongside broader macroeconomic stabilisation following the 2022-2023 debt crisis. Total foreign direct investment reached US$2.62 billion across 254 new projects and existing companies, supported by new investments, petroleum-sector capital and Free Zones activity.
The sectoral figures reinforce the importance of manufacturing to the government’s attempt to shift investment towards productive activity.
Alongside the 99 manufacturing projects, services accounted for 43, general trade 20, export trade six and building and construction five. Mining services and agriculture each recorded three projects, while tourism accounted for two.
Yet the capital ranking was almost the reverse.
Mining services’ US$506.61 million in FDI exceeded manufacturing by nearly US$138 million. Services followed with US$306.36 million, general trade with US$226.62 million, agriculture with US$18.52 million, export trade with US$5.11 million, building and construction with US$5.07 million and tourism with only US$0.70 million.
The figures suggest that project count alone provides an incomplete picture of investment momentum.
A sector can attract many relatively small projects while another records only a handful of transactions carrying hundreds of millions of dollars in capital.
That distinction is particularly relevant to mining services, where a limited number of projects can involve expensive equipment, engineering infrastructure and long-term contracts supporting extractive operations.
The GIPC report itself identifies manufacturing, services and general trade as the leading areas of investment activity and argues that the pattern reflects Ghana’s growing role in industrial production, trade and digital services.
Manufacturing’s performance may be particularly significant for policymakers because of its potential link to employment, exports and domestic supply chains.
A manufacturing project can create demand beyond the investor itself, including transportation, packaging, utilities, professional services, raw materials and local suppliers.
The economic benefit, however, depends heavily on the depth of local sourcing and the extent to which production moves beyond basic assembly into higher-value activities.
The GIPC report says Ghana’s investment agenda is increasingly focused not simply on attracting more capital but on ensuring that investment is geographically distributed, inclusive and capable of generating jobs, innovation and exports.
That will be important because investment remains heavily concentrated geographically.
The report notes that Greater Accra remained the primary destination for new projects, although high-value transactions in the Western and Eastern regions provided indications of greater geographical diversification.
The concentration of high-value investment in mining services also reflects a wider African pattern.
Across the continent, foreign investment remains heavily influenced by extractive industries, infrastructure and a relatively small number of capital-intensive projects. The GIPC report estimates that African FDI declined to about US$70 billion in 2025 from US$94 billion in 2024, while investment remained concentrated in resource-driven sectors.
Ghana’s manufacturing project count therefore offers a potentially important counterweight.
If the country can convert a large number of industrial projects into sustained production, local procurement and exports, it could gradually reduce the degree to which headline FDI performance depends on extractive-sector transactions.
The report also shows that Ghana’s investment performance occurred against a relatively weak global background.
Global FDI increased by about 6.00% to US$1.60 trillion in 2025, but the underlying recovery remained shallow, with high interest rates, geopolitical uncertainty and trade fragmentation weighing on productive investment.
Against that environment, Ghana’s US$2.62 billion in recorded FDI points to a relatively stronger year domestically.
The composition of that investment, however, will ultimately matter as much as the headline total.
Mining services can generate substantial foreign exchange, technical expertise and linkages to Ghana’s gold and minerals industries. Manufacturing offers a potentially wider route to employment, import substitution and export diversification.
Services, meanwhile, continue to benefit from Ghana’s expanding trade, digital and professional-services economy.
The challenge is to ensure that these sectors reinforce one another rather than develop as isolated investment enclaves.
That means using mining activity to create local supplier opportunities, connecting manufacturing firms to regional markets and ensuring service-sector growth supports productive businesses rather than simply consumption.
The 2025 numbers show that Ghana succeeded in attracting both a broad base of manufacturing projects and large capital commitments into mining-related activity.
The next test is whether those investments translate into sustained production, jobs and exports.
For policymakers, the central message from the sectoral breakdown is therefore clear: manufacturing is winning on breadth, mining services on capital intensity.
Ghana’s longer-term investment success will depend on whether it can turn both into deeper domestic economic value.
