Poverty in Ghana : A Threat to Ghana's Democracy

Ghana is one of many African countries that have embarked on reforms to democratize their politics and liberalize their economies. The Afrobarometer surveys have been tracking popular attitudes to political and economic reform in more than a dozen countries in Southern, Eastern and Western Africa. The first round of the Afrobarometer survey in Ghana was conducted in 1999. At that time, Ghana had emerged from 11 years of quasi-military rule under Flight-Lieutenant (retired) Jerry John Rawlings and the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC), and was being governed as a republic under an elected President Rawlings and his National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration. While the democratically elected Rawlings-NDC administration continued broadly to pursue the World Bank/IMF neo-liberal economic reforms initiated in the mid-1980s, there was a growing perception that the macroeconomic environment was deteriorating, fiscal discipline had been abandoned, and corruption was on the rise.

The country was about a year and a half away from a presidential election that President Rawlings could not contest due to constitutional term limits. Since then, Ghana has successfully held a third consecutive multiparty election (in December 2000). Most significantly, the keenly contested election produced the country's first-ever peaceful transfer of power between political parties, with the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) defeating the incumbent NDC in races for both the presidency and control of Parliament. An important political milestone was reached in Ghana on 7 January 2001, when the new administration of John Agyekum Kufuor and the NPP was sworn into office. A somewhat optimistic mood prevailed in the country in September 2002 at the time the study was conducted. The new government was settling into office reasonably smoothly. The NPP was learning to conduct itself as a governing party, and the NDC was getting used to being in opposition.

There was a clear recognition that the country was faced with daunting challenges, but the new government's promises to heal social and political divisions through a policy of an “all-inclusive government,” and to promote clean government by pursuing a policy of “zero tolerance for corruption,” appeared to have generated considerable popular optimism. Similarly, the government's promise to promote foreign and domestic private investment appeared to have rekindled hopes of economic revival. Nevertheless, the economic challenges remained formidable: mass unemployment, appalling poverty, chronic balance of payments and budget deficits that were adding to already unsustainable levels of external and internal public debt, and an unstoppable brain drain threatened the imminent collapse of social services, especially in the key areas of education and health.

The press headlines at the time of the survey were dominated by disturbing news of the violent conflict in the kingdom of Dagbon in the Northern Region of Ghana, including the brutal killing of the Dagbon king and over 30 members of his clan, as well as the imposition of a state of emergency in the conflict area. Also in the news were a controversy over the government's plan to source a commercial loan from the ...