Professor John Asafu-Adjaye, Senior Fellow at the African Centre for Economic Transformation (ACET), said the lack of consistency in national planning is one of the major problems affecting Ghana’s development.

He bemoaned the fact that when one government began a development project and another took over, the new government would not continue the project and “this has been very costly for the country, and it set us back in terms of development.”

Prof Asafu-Adjaye said this at a youth engagement programme in Ho in the Volta Region, organised by ACET in collaboration with the National Commission for Civic Educational (NCCE).

It formed part of ACET and NCCE “Citizens’ Engagements” project with the aim to seek views and concerns from the citizens on issues impeding Ghana’s economic transformation so they could incorporate them into a compact document.

Professor Asafu-Adjaye, stated that since independence, the nation had not managed its financial resources efficiently, which was why it had gone to the IMF 17 times so far for financial bailouts.

The Senior Fellow said the country’s economy had not been transformed as it still depended on the export of primary and unprocessed commodities and called for a robust economic reform agenda to address the problem.

He said the nation’s manufacturing sector, which was meant to generate employment, had likewise not grown at the rate required to produce the anticipated number of jobs, and that in certain years, it had even declined and stagnated

Prof Asafu-Adjaye advocated for a change in the nation’s current political structure, which was highly polarising and made it challenging for the main political parties to cooperate and work together.

Dr Imrana Mohammed, Director of Programmes at the NCCE, stated that the nation could witness the required change that would bring about the development that everyone had been waiting for with combined efforts.

He urged the populace to protect the current state of peace in the nation and to abstain from any actions that would undermine it.

Dr Mohammed urged the public to exercise caution when using social media because of disinformation and misinformation and should also try to decipher the truth from fake news.