...back to Part 1

A quick look at key Ghanaian and Sierra Leonean statistics yields interesting comparisons:

(1) Sierra Leone's population is approximately 7 million (Statistics Sierra Leone 2016 census). Ghana's population is FOUR times as large, at approximately 28 million, much bigger but not overwhelmingly so, like, say, Nigeria, such as to render comparison less appropriate. We often compare Ghana and Nigeria, the two sometimes thought of as big rivals, but Sierra Leone is closer in population to Ghana than Ghana is to Nigeria.

(2) Sierra Leone's GDP in 2016 was $3.678 billion (Sierra Leone Government 2018 Budget speech, p. 80), yielding a GDP per capita of approximately $520. Ghana's 2016 GDP was almost TWELVE times as large at $42.654 billion (Government of Ghana 2018 budget, p. 213) yielding a GDP per capita of almost $1,500. On average, Ghanaians earn almost three times as much as Sierra Leoneans. However this is an average figure and tells us nothing about how this greater income is distributed. It could be that in the top income brackets Ghanaians earn much more than Sierra Leoneans, but in the bottom income brackets earnings are about the same. The Sierra Leonean official minimum wage is Le500,000/ month, about 60 USD. The Ghanaian official minimum wage was recently raised to 10.65 cedis/day, to take effect in January 2019, the equivalent of less than $50 for a 22-day month, still well below Sierra Leone's rate.

(3) The Sierra Leonean Government budgeted 2018 annual expenditure of  Le5.519 trillion (Sierra Leone Government 2018 Budget speech, p. 84), approximately $690 million (at  current exchange rate of Le8,000 = $1) . The Ghanaian Government's budgeted 2018 annual expenditure was 61.151 billion cedis (Government of Ghana 2018 budget, p. 190), approximately  $12.74 billion (at  current exchange rate of 4.8 cedis = $1), more than EIGHTEEN times greater than SLG's expenditure. One of the reasons the difference is even greater than in (2) above is that GoG collects taxes from its people more efficiently than SLG. The Ghanaian government has MUCH more money to spend on roads and hospitals and schools per capita than does the Sierra Leone government.

(4) Sierra Leone's exports in 2016 were $670 million (Sierra Leone Government 2018 Budget speech, p. 74). Ghana's exports in 2016 were $11.137 billion (Government of Ghana 2018 budget, p. 212), more than SIXTEEN times as much as Sierra Leone's. Relatively speaking, taking the difference in population into account, Ghana has four times as much forex availability as Sierra Leone. To some extent this is God-given, rather than as a result of national effort. Ghana earned $4.919 billion from gold sales  and, following recent oil discovery and exploitation,  $1.345 billion from oil sales, these two alone dwarfing all of Sierra Leone's exports. This disparity in foreign earnings may legitimately be ascribed to divine providence. But Ghana also earned $2.572 billion (all figures from the same reference above) in foreign currency from cocoa sales many times higher than Sierra Leone earned from its highest agricultural earner or indeed from all its agricultural exports. After Ivory Coast it is the second highest exporter of cocoa in the world, and its cocoa is reputed to be of higher quality. Only genuine organization and hard work could have produced these results. Ghana's Cocoa Board appears to have organized this sector far more competently than anything we have done in Sierra Leone and the cocoa farmers appear to have higher productivity than the rest of the agricultural sector.

(5) The UN's Human Development Index tells us that Ghanaians have more years of schooling and better access to life-prolonging health care than Sierra Leoneans.

All the above indicate that Ghana is way ahead of Sierra Leone in terms of economic and human development. But there are some equally worrying indicators from Ghana, similarities with Sierra Leone.

(1) Just as in Sierra Leone, approximately half the population lives off the land, in rural areas, and just as in Sierra Leone the productivity of the agrarian population is very poor. FAO estimates that in 2013 the agricultural sector employed 53.6% of the labour force and yet produced only 22% of the GDP. Many of these people are desperately poor, as poor as Sierra Leone's rural population and just as in Sierra Leone will be the source of a steady stream of migrants into the big cities. The problems associated with this are well documented. Just as in Sierra Leone, with high national population growth Ghana's rural poor are growing in number, even though their percentage of the total population may be declining. The approximately 50% rural population today represents 14 million Ghanaians, more than double the total population of 6.7 million counted in the first post-Independence census in 1961.

(2) The Ghanaian government, perhaps even more so than the Sierra Leonean government has a propensity to pile up huge debt, with disastrous consequences for its economy. It happened to Ghana in the seventies and is ongoing now. In 2005/2006 Ghana benefitted (along with other HIPC countries) from at least $4 billion of debt relief from Western governments and multilateral institutions. Ten years later it was back in the same plight of heavy indebtedness. Ghanaian debt to GDP ratio, 73.1% in 2016, is among West Africa's highest (Government of Ghana 2018 budget, p. 228), considerably higher than Sierra Leone's 55.7%. If you are borrowing lots and lots of money, it is not so difficult to maintain a high standard of living, but your living standards take a sudden plummet when you need to repay or when your line of credit is cut off. Ghanaian interest repayments had become so high that the government had to turn to the IMF for assistance in 2015. An IMF loan agreement of $918 million was duly worked out. Despite its early socialism, or perhaps because of it, Ghana enjoys a close relationship with the West and multilateral financial institutions, and may have benefitted disproportionately over the years from international loans and grants. US Millenium Compact funding has totalled over $1 billion since the first compact was signed in 2006. Substantial assistance has come from other US programs, including PL 480 food assistance, and from other OECD countries. Earlier this year (2018) the Ghanaian parliament ratified a controversial military cooperation agreement with the US that potentially involves some loss of Ghanaian sovereignty. There is also an agreement between the two countries for the operation of a military medical research unit, NAMRU-3.  These agreements may involve aid transfers to Ghana.

(3) Like Sierra Leone, Ghana is heavily dependent on a few commodities, in Sierra Leone's case mainly diamonds, in Ghana's case, gold, oil and cocoa. These three are very much subject to commodity price volatility. If prices were to drop significantly, Ghana could be in more trouble.

(4) The Ghanaian Cedi, even more than the Sierra Leone Leone has had, to put it mildly a chequered history. After a disastrous slide through the last decades of the previous century (it hit 10,000 to the dollar before the end!), the new Ghanaian Cedi was introduced in 2007 at a value a little stronger than the US dollar. However the slide was not halted; it has been virtually continuous since then, much like the leone's fall. Today the rate is almost 5 cedis to the dollar. By some assessments the strength of a national currency is the most fundamental assessment of the underlying economy. By this yardstick, the Ghanaian economy is failing.

(5) Worlddata.info claims 8,212 Ghanaians claimed asylum in other countries in 2017. The same source gives 2,993 asylum seekers from Sierra Leone. Ghanaweb says 7649 Ghanaian asylum seekers in two years.  If things are generally so good in Ghana, why are so many Ghanaians fleeing their country?


In summary, Ghana is something of an enigma. Its trajectory is unclear. The Ghanaian soul is hard to discern. The country has vacillated wildly between the depths of poverty and relative prosperity. (At least Sierra Leone has been consistent in its poverty!) It has rich and powerful friends who have helped considerably to maintain its current vibrancy, but capitalism doesn't back profligacy indefinitely. Nkrumah's radical socialism has been overtaken by an ostentatious, consumerist capitalism, but large segments of society have been left behind and may be secretly yearning for another Osagyefo. More than fifty years after his overthrow, forty-six years after his death, he still casts a long shadow in Ghana. The monuments he left, Independence Circle and Black Star Square are still Accra's showpieces. Busts and statues of him are prominent and his name adorns many institutions, including the nation's best science university, the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, KNUST, twice renamed, and the magnificent newly-built interchange in Accra (pictured in Part 1), Kwame Nkrumah Circle; this despite half-hearted attempts by some of Nkrumah's successors, themselves long nameless and faceless in the march of history, to erase his name from Ghanaian consciousness. Ghana under Nkrumah embraced pan-Africanism, and sought to bring together all of Africa, but since then Ghana has turned inward. It is now often criticized by fellow West Africans for a xenophobic Ghana-first attitude, and contrasted negatively with the warmth and generosity of big-brother Nigeria. Ghana is said to be slow to render assistance to African brothers in need, in Sierra Leone most notably during the depths of our rebel war. One gets the sense that the struggle between the two sides of Ghana may not yet be over.