Ghana’s economy is on course to hit a nominal gross domestic product (GDP) of US$113 billion in 2025, President John Dramani Mahama told Parliament on Friday, a figure that would place the country among Africa’s ten largest economies and mark a dramatic 36 percent expansion from the US$83 billion recorded in 2024.
The projection, disclosed during Mahama’s second State of the Nation Address (SONA) under Article 67 of the Constitution, represents the most concrete benchmark yet of the economic recovery the government has pursued since taking office in January 2025. It also signals Ghana’s emergence from the shadow of the 2022 debt crisis, which had briefly pushed the country out of international capital markets and triggered one of the largest debt restructuring exercises in African history.
Alongside the GDP milestone, Mahama disclosed that Ghana settled a US$709 million eurobond ahead of its scheduled 2025 repayment date, completing a total US$1.4 billion external debt service obligation for the year. The early repayment, which the President described as a deliberate signal to international creditors, came as Ghana received credit rating upgrades from Fitch Ratings, Moody’s Investors Service, and S&P Global Ratings — a triple upgrade that no Ghanaian government had secured simultaneously within a single fiscal year.
“Ghana is back. Ghana is working again, and Ghana is open for business,” Mahama said in Parliament.
The GDP trajectory underpins the broader economic scorecard Mahama presented on Friday. Average growth for the first three quarters of 2025 stood at 6.1 percent, while the primary surplus reached 2.6 percent of GDP, exceeding the International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme target of 1.5 percent. The fiscal deficit closed at 3.1 percent of GDP, below the projected ceiling of 3.8 percent.
Public debt fell by GH¢82.1 billion over the course of 2025, reducing the debt-to-GDP ratio from 61.8 percent to 45.3 percent. Inflation declined from 23.8 percent at the end of 2024 to 3.8 percent by January 2026.
Ghana’s entry into Africa’s top ten economies by nominal GDP — if the 2025 figure is confirmed by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) — would place it alongside Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Algeria, Angola, and Morocco in the continent’s economic elite. It would also mark the first time Ghana has reached that threshold, a development with significant implications for the country’s weight in continental negotiations under the African Union (AU) and the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
