Former President John Agyekum Kufuor has called for policy consistency and cross-party commitment to private sector development, warning that frequent shifts in economic direction have undermined investor confidence and slowed job creation for a growing generation of young Ghanaians.
Kufuor made the remarks on Tuesday, April 14, as guest of honour at the inaugural Design and Technology Institute (DTI) Legacy Dialogue Series on Entrepreneurship and the Future of Work, held in Accra under the theme “Within Our Lifetime: Building Ghana’s Industrial Future.”
Drawing on Ghana’s pre-independence history, he argued that the Gold Coast’s emergence as the world’s leading cocoa producer in the 1940s was powered not by state direction but by individual farmers responding to market incentives. That model of private-led growth, he said, was dismantled after independence when successive governments assumed the role of primary economic actor, crowding out entrepreneurs and replacing enterprise with bureaucracy.
“The State by itself cannot enrich society,” he said. “Wealth creation happens when individuals are allowed to venture, take risks and pursue profit within a regulated environment. That is how jobs are created and societies advance.”
He said his administration’s pursuit of what he described as a “Golden Age of Business” from 2001 to 2009 was a deliberate attempt to reverse those distortions, by positioning the private sector as the engine of national development and the state as a regulator and enabler rather than a competitor.
With nearly 60 percent of Ghana’s population under 35, he warned that job creation cannot depend on government alone. “Without a vibrant private sector, frustration will continue to grow,” he said, calling on policymakers across party lines to treat entrepreneurship as a national development strategy rather than a partisan agenda. “This must go beyond partisan politics. Who does not want Ghana to be far richer than it is today?”
Constance Elizabeth Swaniker, Founder and President of the DTI, announced that the institute had broken ground for an 11-acre multi-skills campus at Berekuso, backed by a three million euro African Union grant through the African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD) and financing from the German development bank KfW. The facility is designed to train thousands of young people annually in technical and entrepreneurial disciplines.
Swaniker also announced that the institute’s new entrepreneurship hub at the Berekuso campus would be named the J. A. Kufuor Centre for Entrepreneurship in recognition of the former president’s long-standing advocacy for private sector growth. “This is not a ceremonial gesture,” she said. “It is a legacy measured by the businesses built, jobs created and industries transformed.”
She called on businesses to move beyond corporate social responsibility and invest directly in skills development partnerships, describing the mismatch between graduate skills and employer needs as a structural challenge requiring coordinated action.
The dialogue brought together policymakers, industry representatives, development partners and academics to examine strategies for strengthening entrepreneurship and aligning workforce training with evolving market demands.
