By Nicholas Issaka GBANA
These are stakeholder and citizens engagement and participation; youth, women and social inclusion; climate smart solutions; innovation; learning, knowledge exchange and adaptive management.
Stakeholder and citizens engagement and participation
As indicated in Part 1 of this series Ghana deteriorated on the elements of voice and accountability, rule of law, and control of corruption between 2016 and 2023. Ghanaians expect the Mahama administration to change the narrative. The upcoming National Education Forum and National Economic Dialogue is welcome news. But that is not enough.
MDAs, MMDAs and SOEs should actively identify 24HE stakeholders in their sector and engage them in the conception, design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of 24HE projects.
These stakeholders will broadly include private sector industry associations, informal sector associations, organized labour, traditional rulers, professional bodies, civil society organizations, and youth groups who will be the ultimate beneficiaries of 24HE projects in the form of decent jobs.
Each MDA, MMDA and SOE should form a 24HE Advisory Group with representation from these stakeholders that will meet periodically physically and online. Any 24HE policy paper or program design prepared by experts should be validated with the 24HE Advisory Group to elicit their feedback to refine it before implementation begins.
MDAs, MMDAs and SOEs should not limit their stakeholder engagement with the 24HE Advisory Group only. They should engage with bigger stakeholder groups periodically.
The bottom-line goal for 24HE is jobs for the youth especially. Social media provides a convenient and inexpensive way for MDAs, MMDAs and SOEs to engage Generation Z (GenZ) and get their perspectives on 24HE projects. It should not be the case of ‘‘…the youth have no sense, only the old can lead Ghana…’’ as Honorable KT Hammond expressed in September 2022.
Women, youth and social inclusion
All GSS statistics on jobs from 2021 to date indicates that women and youth are disproportionately represented in the unemployed and vulnerable work.
For the 3rd quarter of 2023, the overall unemployment rate was 14.7%. Yet the unemployment rate for females was 17.7% compared to 10.9% for males. The unemployment rate for 15 – 35 year olds was 21.7%; and the rate for 15 – 24 year olds was 29.7%.
The overall percent of persons employed in vulnerable work was 68.5%. Yet the percent of females employed in vulnerable work was 77.8% compared to 57.6% for males.
The GSS’s 2021 Population and Housing Census also indicates that 7.8% of the population 5 years and older had some form of disability with difficulty in seeing as the most prevalent (4%), walking and climbing of stairs (3.6%), remembering and concentration (2%), hearing (1.7%), self-care (1.2%), and communicating (1%).
Accordingly, 24HE must set overall targets for the inclusion of women, youth and persons with disability in the overall 1.7 million new jobs to be created by 2028. The inclusion targets should also be set for the related goal of reducing existing vulnerable work.
Climate smart solutions
24HE should contribute to Ghana’s climate agenda as specified in the Updated Nationally Determined Contribution (Climate NDC) under the Paris Agreement (2020 – 2030).
The Climate NDC seeks to ‘’build a resilient society that can adequately withstand the impacts of climate change and contribute to mitigating global emissions’’. It includes climate mitigation and adaptation measures covering key sectors of the economy including energy, agriculture, forests, water, transportation, housing, infrastructure in cities, oil and gas, and waste management.
All 24HE projects by the private sector or public sector should therefore incorporate climate smart solutions in their design and implementation. This will enhance the prospects of such projects attracting climate finance and investments.
Ghanaian export products for the European Union market must comply with the European Union Regulation on Deforestation-free Products (EUDR) that comes to force on 30 December 2025 for large and medium companies, and 30 June 2026 for micro and small enterprises.
EUDR affects commodities like cattle, wood, cocoa, soybean, palm oil, coffee, rubber, and some of their derived products, such as leather, chocolate, tyres, or furniture. Under the Regulation, any operator or trader who places these commodities on the EU market, or exports from it, must be able to prove that the products do not originate from recently deforested land or have contributed to forest degradation.
EUDR requires Ghanaian exporters of the affected products to the European Union to collaborate with relevant MDAs to design and implement traceability systems for their export products.
Innovation
The low and inconsistent economic growth and lack of structural transformation in the Ghanaian economy is significantly attributable to low innovation.
Ghana was at par in economic development with South Korea in 1960. In 2023, South Korea had a GDP of $1,713 billion which was twenty-two times that of Ghana’s GDP at $76 billion. South Korea also had a GDP per capita of $33,128 which was seventeen times that of Ghana at $2,261.
There are studies comparing the two economies that significantly attribute South Korea’s economic growth and high standard of living for its citizens to a high level of innovation compared to Ghana.
The Harvard Growth Lab Economic Complexity Index (ECI) which assesses the current state of a country’s productive knowledge has consistently ranked Ghana a less complex economy from 2000 to 2022. In the same period, Vietnam has significantly moved up from a less complex economy to a more complex economy.
A less complex economy means a less diversified economy and less decent jobs.
24HE must stimulate innovation in the Ghanaian economy to expand and diversify it to create and sustain decent jobs.
According to the World Bank, innovation means technologies or practices that are new to a given society. What is not disseminated and used is not an innovation. Innovation is distinct from research and in fact need not result from it. Innovation should be homegrown and also capture global knowledge and technology to adapt and disseminate for the Ghana context.
The Mahama administration should develop an Innovation Policy to complement 24HE. Among others the policy should require MDAs, MMDAs and SOEs to allocate say 1% of their annual budget to fund sector specific innovations. It should specify how public institutions can co-fund innovations with the private sector and CSOs.
The policy should provide guidelines covering innovation priorities particularly relating to private sector growth; increased productivity and enhanced competitiveness; job creation and decent work for women, youth and PWDs in particular.
It should outline criteria for selecting innovations for funding, specify procedures for transparent evaluation of innovation funding proposals, and provide a framework for monitoring and evaluation of funded innovations.
MDAs, MMDAs and SOEs should use their 24HE Advisory Groups as sounding boards for innovation.
The Ministry of Finance and Controller and Accountant General should create a distinct accounting line item in the Government Integrated Financial and Management Information System (GIFMIS) and SOE accounting systems to track public sector innovation expenditure.
The Annual Report of every MDA, MMDA and SOE should include a section on Innovation.
Lastly, a National Innovation Award Scheme should be established to recognize impactful innovations in all sectors of the economy as part of Republic Day (1st July) celebrations.
Learning, knowledge exchange and adaptive management
24HE implementation should incorporate guidelines for learning and deriving lessons learnt from 24HE projects within MDAs, MMDAs and SOEs.
The guidelines should complement the standard project monitoring and evaluation protocols in place within each institution. The agendas for Board and management meetings, quarterly and annual review meetings, should include ‘24HE lessons learnt’.
There should be mechanisms for knowledge exchange amongst and across MDAs, MMDAs and SOEs and their respective 24HE stakeholders. This should include cross sectoral and multi-agency working groups for thematic subjects like Access to Finance for MSMEs, TVET, African Continental Free Trade Area (AFCTA), private-public-CSO partnerships, formalizing the informal sector, and digitalizing public services.
The 24HE vision articulated by President Mahama will remain the same over the next four years. Similarly, the 24HE bottom-line goal of creating new decent jobs and reducing vulnerable work will remain the same.
But, MDAs, MMDAs, SOEs and their 24HE stakeholders should be dynamic and flexible with their strategies. Unexpected changes, challenges, and opportunities can arise at any moment during 24HE project implementation. Accordingly, lessons learnt should be fed into 24HE project design and implementation to ensure adaptive management.
This is the continuation od the series published last week Thursday .Part 4 of this article series will examine the Reset Agenda for Bank of Ghana and Monetary Policy to power 24HE. It will draw on specific pledges in the NDC 2024 Manifesto and lessons from East Africa and other parts of the world.
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The writer is a Development Economist and Chartered Accountant, Member of the National Democratic Congress, and Executive Member of Eagles Forum, a social democratic organization.
He was a Member of the NDC’s 2024 Manifesto Committee on Jobs and Employment Creation and Lead for the 24-Hour Economy Task Team. He also served on the 2024 Transition Team Social Sector Committee.
