Policy think tank IMANI Africa has warned that Ghana’s newly launched 30 year Infrastructure Plan could easily become another glossy document gathering dust on government shelves without genuine political and institutional commitment, tempering celebrations around what officials describe as one of the most ambitious development blueprints in the country’s history.
The reaction follows President John Dramani Mahama’s October 22, 2025 launch of the Ghana Infrastructure Plan, a strategic framework developed by the National Development Planning Commission to guide national infrastructure development through 2057 and end what Ghanaians have endured for decades: recurring cycles of abandoned and politicized projects that waste resources and frustrate citizens.
The plan aims to modernize infrastructure across transport, energy, water, sanitation, and housing while promoting balanced regional development to reduce geographical inequalities between Ghana’s prosperous southern regions and underdeveloped northern areas. It’s a worthy goal that successive governments have promised and failed to deliver, leaving IMANI skeptical about whether this attempt will prove different.
In its review titled “The Ghana Infrastructure Plan: A 30 Year Blueprint for Continuity and Fiscal Discipline,” IMANI argues that success will depend less on design quality and more on how faithfully the plan gets implemented, a distinction that matters enormously in Ghana where excellent policy documents routinely fail during execution.
The think tank emphasizes the need for strong institutional discipline, urging that the NDPC be given authority and independence to monitor and enforce adherence to the plan across all ministries and agencies. Currently, the NDPC lacks enforcement powers, functioning more as a coordinator than a regulator, which historically has allowed ministries to ignore national development priorities when politically convenient.
IMANI stresses transparency and accountability as non negotiable pillars for success, calling for open project appraisal, procurement, and implementation processes supported by regular progress reports to Parliament and the public. Such transparency would help prevent corruption, inflated costs, and abandoned projects that have plagued Ghana’s infrastructure delivery for generations.
Another key requirement, according to IMANI, is a robust public investment management system ensuring only viable, high impact projects make it onto the national agenda. This would help Ghana avoid frequent cost overruns and poor value for money outcomes that have characterized past infrastructure programmes.
The NDPC’s 2024 National Annual Progress Report revealed over GH¢70 billion in cost overruns across 18,000 capital projects, many delayed or abandoned, providing sobering context for why IMANI’s skepticism isn’t mere cynicism but rather reality based assessment of Ghana’s infrastructure implementation track record.
Perhaps the most crucial factor, IMANI says, is political continuity. The GIP must be treated as a national agenda rather than a partisan manifesto, with successive governments resisting temptation to abandon or replace it with short term projects for political gain, precisely what has happened repeatedly throughout Ghana’s democratic history.
Parliament’s Economy and Development Committee Chairman Dr. Eric Afful acknowledged this challenge, noting that previous development plans failed to yield lasting results because new governments abandon existing blueprints in favor of their own manifestos. He indicated government will institutionalize the plan into law to ensure continuity across successive administrations, though whether such legislation will actually bind future governments remains uncertain.
The GIP requires an estimated $37 billion over 30 years plus $8 billion annually for maintenance across all sectors, according to government estimates. Dr. Afful disclosed that financing is expected to come from the domestic market and private sector locally rather than international borrowing, an approach that sounds fiscally responsible but raises questions about whether Ghana’s domestic capital markets possess sufficient depth to fund such ambitious infrastructure development.
President Mahama announced stringent fiscal measures including a legal cap on the debt ceiling at 45% of GDP by 2034 and establishment of a Fiscal Responsibility Council to penalize infractions under the Public Financial Management Act. He also revealed the acting Chief Justice agreed to establish specialized courts to fast track prosecution of individuals who misappropriate public funds, citing an example where hospital staff continued paying a deceased employee for 26 months after his funeral.
These accountability measures sound promising, though Ghana has created similar oversight bodies before that functioned weakly due to political interference, insufficient resources, or simply bureaucratic inertia. The real test will be whether these institutions maintain independence and enforcement capacity when powerful politicians or well connected contractors violate rules.
The government’s Big Push initiative, which allocated GH¢13.9 billion for 2025 infrastructure spending with promises of $30 billion for 2026, serves as the first implementation phase of the broader GIP. It focuses on completing abandoned and delayed projects in line with Article 35(7) of the 1992 Constitution, which mandates successive governments continue projects started by their predecessors, a constitutional provision honored more in the breach than in observance.
NDPC Acting Director General Dr. Audrey Smoak Hammond emphasized that no government, however committed, can build a nation alone, stating that unity of effort is necessary for infrastructure to cease being projects on paper and become daily frameworks of national transformation. It’s the kind of sentiment that sounds inspiring but requires concrete mechanisms to translate into reality.
NDPC Chairman Dr. Nii Moi Thompson traced Ghana’s infrastructure planning journey to Dr. Kwame Nkrumah’s 1965 launch of Africa’s first integrated infrastructure and industrial development plan, which sought to extend the Accra Tema Motorway to Paga, modernize urban settlements, and ensure equitable industrial growth but was abandoned after the 1966 coup, leading to decades of infrastructural decline and economic stagnation.
Dr. Thompson noted that Ghana’s present development challenges are rooted in this history of policy discontinuity, citing that in 1962 Ghana’s per capita income was 73% higher than South Korea’s but has since fallen to 95% lower, a devastating comparison that illustrates the cost of political instability and development policy inconsistency over six decades.
The NDPC is working toward completing a composite long term framework called “Ghana Vision 2057: A Roadmap for Economic Transformation and Shared Prosperity,” which would harmonize earlier frameworks including Ghana Beyond Aid and Ghana@100 into a single national blueprint, essentially trying to merge competing visions from successive NPP and NDC administrations into one coherent plan.
IMANI’s assessment is that the GIP provides a structured foundation for Ghana’s long term infrastructure and fiscal sustainability, and if effectively implemented could boost investor confidence, rationalize public spending, and close the infrastructure gap that has constrained growth for decades. However, without genuine political discipline and inter party cooperation, it risks becoming another well written plan with limited real impact.
The think tank’s warning reflects broader concerns among policy analysts and development practitioners who’ve watched numerous ambitious plans launched with fanfare only to languish during implementation as political priorities shift, budgets get diverted, oversight weakens, and the original vision gets diluted through a thousand small compromises and calculated abandonments.
Ghana faces an infrastructure financing gap that the Global Infrastructure Hub Index quantifies by giving the country a score of 47 out of 100, below the average for lower middle income countries, reflecting persistent structural deficits that constrain economic activity and quality of life for ordinary Ghanaians who navigate deteriorating roads, unreliable electricity, and inadequate water supply daily.
The GIP aligns with the African Union’s Agenda 2063 and UN Sustainable Development Goals, particularly SDG 9 calling for resilient infrastructure and innovation, providing international legitimacy and framework compatibility that should help attract development partner support, though past experience shows that international alignment doesn’t guarantee domestic implementation success.
For investors and businesses, the plan creates both opportunities and uncertainties. The GH¢13.9 billion allocation for 2025 represents substantial procurement and construction activity, while the 30 year horizon suggests sustained demand for infrastructure services, but execution capabilities that have proven elusive for previous administrations raise questions about whether announced investments will materialize as planned.
Deputy Finance Minister Thomas Nyarko Ampem called on stakeholders to rally behind the GIP, describing it as a defining step toward building a modern, connected, and resilient nation, emphasizing that beyond technical soundness, success depends heavily on strategic communication and public engagement to inspire collective ownership and attract private sector partnerships.
Whether the GIP achieves transformative objectives or joins archives of unfulfilled development plans depends on factors extending well beyond launch ceremony rhetoric. Implementation capacity, fiscal discipline, political continuity, and sustained commitment across multiple election cycles will ultimately determine if this blueprint delivers coordinated, equitable, and sustainable development that President Mahama envisions for Ghana’s next three decades.
IMANI Africa’s cautionary message serves as necessary counterweight to official optimism, reminding policymakers and citizens that infrastructure transformation requires more than beautiful documents and inspiring speeches. It demands institutional strength, political maturity, fiscal discipline, transparency, accountability, and most challenging of all in Ghana’s context, genuine willingness to subordinate partisan electoral calculations to long term national development imperatives.
The coming months and years will reveal whether Ghana’s political class and implementing institutions possess the commitment and capacity to transform the GIP from aspirational blueprint into operational reality, or whether this becomes yet another case study in the gap between development planning ambition and ground level execution that has characterized too much of Ghana’s post independence infrastructure history.
For now, Ghanaians have another comprehensive plan promising better roads, reliable electricity, clean water, and balanced regional development. Whether they eventually get the infrastructure or simply more broken promises depends entirely on whether the warnings IMANI Africa raises get heeded by those with power to either implement faithfully or allow this blueprint to gather dust alongside its predecessors.
