Counting the Cost

Ghana’s economic woes

We look at how a nation’s promise of prosperity was turned into a recipe for poverty and hardship.

Ghana is one of the most stable nations in Africa and thanks to cocoa, gold, and then the discovery of oil, the country was on course to become one of the fastest growing economies in the world.

And then it all went wrong and it had to turn to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to help sort out its economic mess. The trouble started when Ghana began spending money before it began pumping oil.

Debt rose from $9bn to $23bn in just three years. And where Ghana had expected to earn as much as $5bn by 2015, it received less than $900m between 2010 and 2012. Ghana’s currency tumbled 40 percent and inflation rose to almost 14 percent.

To explain the effect of all this, Ama Boateng reports on what Ghana’s economic slide is doing to its own people. We also speak to Angus Downie, the head of economic research at West African-bank Ecobank.