Ghana’s problem is not merely corruption or bad policy — it’s disorganization at the very core of social life. Economists often call this “institutional weakness,” but that’s too polite a term. What we really have is a failure of social order — a collective inability to agree on rules, standards, and systems that everyone must live by.
When a Ghanaian looks for a job, they call a relative. When a business needs a contract, it finds a political sponsor. These are not moral failings; they are rational responses to a society where formal systems don’t work. But when personal connections replace competence as the organizing principle of life, you get a society that rewards loyalty over ability — and punishes excellence.
That is why Ghanaian firms rarely outlive their founders. The first generation builds from grit and charisma, but succession collapses because the system has no architecture for continuity. Across Sub-Saharan Africa, only 20–25% of family businesses survive into the second generation, compared with 40% in East Asia and 50% in developed economies. The difference isn’t about intelligence; it’s about organization.
THE FIRST LAW OF ORGANIZATION: STANDARDS
If Ghana wants to escape this chaos, it must start with the most basic building block of social order — standards.
Standards are the unwritten codes that govern how societies behave: what is acceptable, what is excellent, and what is beneath us. They are what keep millions of people moving in the same direction without constant supervision.
In Ghana, standards have collapsed. Look no further than Parliament. What should be a symbol of national order has become a theatre of self-indulgence. Members turn the chamber into a catwalk of cultural assertion — kente, agbada, kaftan — not as expressions of unity, but as declarations of individual exception. Each outfit says: I am not bound by the rules; I am the rule.
That same spirit animates the convoys that violate traffic laws with blaring sirens, the public officials who treat state funds as spoils, and the contractors who build bridges to nowhere. It’s all one phenomenon: a culture of exceptionalism. When everyone behaves by exception, the system collapses under the weight of its own improvisation.
Standards are not about aesthetics — they are about efficiency. They are a public good. Like clean air or public safety, standards make cooperation possible. Without them, every transaction is a negotiation, every project an ordeal, and every institution a ticking time bomb.
THE SECOND LAW OF ORGANIZATION: DEVOLVE POWER, CONNECT THE MARKET
The next reform Ghana needs is decentralization. To build companies that can overcome these systemic constraints, government must boldly devolve administrative power away from Accra.
Entrepreneurship does not happen in the abstract; it happens in proximity to markets, infrastructure, and public services. Yet Ghana’s economic geography is absurdly centralized. All meaningful authority, financing, and regulation flow from the capital — leaving the rest of the country functionally disconnected.
The result is a paradox: local entrepreneurs are told to innovate, but they operate in places where there is no functioning administration, no reliable infrastructure, and no one to make decisions.
Decentralization is not about politics; it’s about economic geometry. Villages, towns, and cities need real administrative capacity — councils or managers with the authority to support local businesses, issue licenses, enforce standards, and maintain public order.
When people know there is visible authority where they live — a council that fixes roads, a town manager that registers enterprises, a local institution that actually solves problems — they begin to act as social beings, not disconnected survivalists. They own their communities.
Unfortunately, successive governments have preferred grand monuments to tangible connectivity: interchanges, cathedrals, stadiums — projects designed for historical plaques rather than daily productivity. But no society ever developed by building cathedrals while neglecting the roads that connect its villages to its markets.
If Ghana wants to foster entrepreneurship, it must build horizontal connectivity — the local roads, digital infrastructure, and administrative systems that make commerce possible where people actually live.
THE THIRD LAW OF ORGANIZATION: ALIGN THE STATE WITH CAPITALISM
Now for the controversial part — the one that will make many Ghanaians bristle: we must align the state’s interests with that of domestic capitalism.
I can already hear the skepticism. After all, Ghanaians don’t trust politicians — and with good reason. But before you scoff, take a look in the mirror. The politician we mistrust is merely doing what we would do in his place: exploiting a broken system that rewards personal gain over collective purpose. He is not going to get out of the way voluntarily. We will have to litigate with him for power — not in court, but in the arena of ideas and institutions — to force the state to work for national enterprise, not against it.
What I’m proposing is not favoritism or crony capitalism. It is strategic alignment. The state must identify big national challenges — in agriculture, manufacturing, health, logistics, technology — and then design incentives that reward domestic companies capable of solving them at scale.
This could happen through a national “thinking center” — a technocratic institution that maps out the country’s strategic opportunities and then coordinates public policy to support Ghanaian firms tackling them.
State support — in the form of tax holidays, subsidized utilities, or import duty exemptions — should not be handouts. They should be conditional, competitive, and transparent — extended only to companies, not individuals, that are investing their own capital to solve pre-identified national problems.
When a Ghanaian company is building factories, employing thousands, or exporting goods, it is creating the kind of social stability that politics alone cannot. That company deserves state support — not as patronage, but as a public partnership.
The key is trust — and trust must be earned on both sides. The more companies put their own skin in the game, the more they deserve predictable state backing. And the more government behaves transparently, the more citizens will accept that capitalism can, in fact, be patriotic.
The challenge ahead — and one we must tackle in earnest — is how to build this partnership in a way that strengthens social order rather than reproduces political capture. That is the next frontier.
STANDARDS AS INFRASTRUCTURE
If you strip away the noise, Ghana’s development dilemma is simply this: every transaction carries the hidden tax of mistrust. Standards are how you remove that tax. They are social infrastructure — as vital as roads or power plants — because they allow coordination to happen automatically.
When standards govern conduct, efficiency rises. Japan, South Korea, Singapore — all began their ascent by institutionalizing standards in work, governance, and industry. Ghana’s challenge is to do the same — to replace charisma with competence, improvisation with order.
REPAIRING THE PARKING LOT
The chaotic parking lot remains the perfect metaphor. Every driver insists on their own rule, every car blocks another, and everyone blames everyone else. When fire breaks out, the whole lot burns.
The solution is simple but not easy: paint the lines. Set standards. Devolve authority. Align the state with productive capitalism. Stop glorifying chaos as culture.
Development is not a miracle — it’s a form of discipline.
THE ROAD TO ORDER
History tells us that nations rise not because their people are inherently better, but because they build systems that make good behavior rational and bad behavior costly.
If Ghana can rebuild standards, decentralize power, and forge a new alliance between the state and genuine domestic enterprise, then its capitalism can finally mature — producing firms that outlive their founders, jobs that last beyond election cycles, and wealth that isn’t measured in convoys or cathedrals.
The day Ghana learns to park its cars in orderly rows will be the day it learns to organize its future.
By: Hene Aku Kwapong
CDD Ghana Fellow, Ecobank Ghana board member, & Founder, NBOSI (www.nbosi.org)
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