Minority Leader Alexander Afenyo-Markin has mounted a comprehensive defence of the New Patriotic Party’s (NPP) ideological roots, arguing that the Danquah-Dombo-Busia political tradition has consistently delivered tangible gains for ordinary Ghanaians rather than serving a privileged few.
Speaking at the maiden lecture series of the Institute of Economic Research and Public Policy (IERPP), Afenyo-Markin addressed head-on the long-standing charge that the centre-right tradition is elitist by design. He told the audience that a tradition is not judged by its origins but by the direction of its policies, pointing to the social programmes introduced under the administrations of President John Agyekum Kufuor and President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo as the measure of its actual record.
The Minority Leader traced what he described as Ghana’s three dominant political traditions, contrasting the state-centred development model of Kwame Nkrumah, the populist-structural adjustment blend of the Jerry John Rawlings era, and the individual liberty-focused framework of the Danquah-Dombo-Busia tradition. He stressed that the latter, unlike the other two, had never taken power by force, winning it instead at the ballot box and accepting electoral defeat when it came.
On the Kufuor years, Afenyo-Markin cited the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) as direct evidence against the elitism charge, arguing that the policy removed the financial barrier between sick Ghanaians and the healthcare they needed. He also referenced the Capitation Grant and the School Feeding Programme, which he said pushed basic school enrolment from around 85 percent to over 90 percent by 2008, with the greatest gains recorded among girls and children in rural communities. The 2007 Jubilee oil field discovery, made possible by the Kufuor administration’s investor-friendly regulatory framework, was described as proof that private enterprise, when properly regulated, generates wealth more reliably than state seizure of productive assets.
Turning to the Akufo-Addo era, the Effutu Member of Parliament (MP) described the Free Senior High School (Free SHS) policy as a historic turning point, stating that between 2017 and 2024, more than three million young Ghanaians gained access to secondary education who previously would have been locked out. He also highlighted the establishment of 34 new Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) institutions, 20 Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) centres, and 10 model STEM senior high schools as evidence of an education agenda aimed at producing owners, not merely workers.
On industrial policy, Afenyo-Markin defended the One-District-One-Factory (1D1F) initiative as the clearest practical expression of the tradition’s belief in private-sector-led development, citing approximately 169,870 jobs linked to 321 projects at various stages of implementation. He also pointed to the Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) programme as a shift from subsistence support to genuine productivity empowerment for farmers, linking cocoa sector reforms under Kufuor back to the advocacy of J.B. Danquah, known as Akuafo Kanea, meaning the Light of the Farmer.
The Minority Leader closed with a forward-looking argument on digital identity and the economy of the future, describing the Ghana Card project as transforming legal identity into a platform for economic participation. He argued that digital infrastructure and STEM investment were not merely education policies but property policies, positioning young Ghanaians to own assets in the fourth industrial revolution. He urged scholars and young people to engage seriously with the founding texts of the tradition, saying its principles of liberty, constitutionalism, and enterprise remained urgencies of the present.
