Ghana scores 5 out of a possible 13 points on a new continental industrialisation readiness framework, placing the country in the “Vulnerable” category alongside Kenya, with the Business Council for Africa’s 2025 Real Economic Development (RED) Index identifying underdeveloped structural engines as the primary constraint on the country’s industrial transformation.
The RED Index, published by the Business Council for Africa (BCA) with a foreword by Dangote Group President and Chief Executive Aliko Dangote, evaluates 54 African countries across 13 factors organised into three pillars: seven Engines of industrialisation, three Accelerators, and three Decelerators. The framework benchmarks African nations against the industrialisation trajectories of South Korea, Malaysia, Vietnam, China, Brazil, Morocco, and Ethiopia, asking whether each factor has been applied at the national scale and coherence required to support near double-digit economic growth.
Ghana’s scorecard reveals a split profile. On Accelerators, the country scores positively across all three criteria, being assessed as having functioning public-private partnerships (PPPs), a fully interoperable payment switch, specifically cited in the report as a continental example of payments innovation and an open economy. These strengths place Ghana among a group of 12 countries, including Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, and Rwanda, that have demonstrated functioning Accelerator deployment.
However, Ghana fails to meet the threshold on all seven Engine indicators, which include a high-growth mindset, electrification, big banks, digital broadband, transportation, national champions, and science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education. The index also finds that none of Ghana’s three structural Decelerators, corruption, high birth rates, and security are sufficiently contained to meet the benchmark for industrial momentum.
The index’s core argument is that Accelerators without Engines produce growth without transformation. Countries like Ghana and Kenya, it states, have strong payment systems and openness but lack the power reliability, transport depth, financial scale, industrial champions, and STEM workforce pipeline required to convert economic activity into sustained structural change.
Morocco leads the continent with a perfect score of 13, rated as Africa’s most coherent emerging-market-style industrial model. Egypt scores 12, South Africa 11, and Mauritius 10, forming the index’s four “Leaders.” Rwanda and Nigeria are classified as “Contenders,” with scores of 8 and 6 respectively. The majority of African countries fall into the “Stalled” category, exhibiting minimal structural engines and uncontained Decelerators.
Dangote, in the report’s foreword, called the RED Index a practical tool for aligning public policy, long-term capital, and private sector execution around shared industrial priorities, drawing on over USD 30 billion in personal investments across more than 18 African countries over four decades to underscore the argument that Africa’s development must ultimately be driven from within.
