Ghana’s top national planning authority has called for a fundamental shift in how the country measures economic success, arguing that gross domestic product (GDP) growth alone conceals critical failures in job creation and income improvement that directly affect ordinary Ghanaians.
Dr. Nii Moi Thompson, Chairman of the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC), made the call at the Ishmael Yamson and Associates Business Roundtable 2026 in Accra, telling policymakers and business leaders that development strategy must be reoriented around three equally weighted indicators: GDP growth, employment creation, and wage growth.
“Growth without jobs is meaningless. Growth without rising incomes is unsustainable,” Dr. Thompson said, stressing that economic expansion that fails to translate into decent work and better pay does not improve the lives of citizens.
He explained that the current focus on GDP presents a limited picture of economic performance, and that true progress should be assessed through a combination of output growth, employment growth, and wage growth.
Dr. Thompson pointed to Ghana’s informal sector as the clearest example of the disconnect, noting that while it employs nearly 80 percent of the workforce, it contributes just 27 percent to GDP. He argued that improving the productivity and formalisation of informal businesses would expand the tax base, create sustainable jobs, and raise incomes at scale.
He also called for stronger alignment between national development plans and budgetary allocations, warning that poor coordination between planning and public spending has consistently undermined the execution of government programmes.
Delivering the welcome address, Ishmael Yamson, Chief Executive Officer of Ishmael Yamson and Associates, urged African countries to move beyond the rhetoric of “Africa Rising” and focus on practical execution. He said extractive growth models continue to generate limited value retention within local economies, and called for deeper regional economic cooperation under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) to accelerate industrialisation and intra-African trade.
The roundtable brought together policymakers, business leaders, and development experts to discuss strategies for sustainable economic transformation in Ghana and across Africa.
