Restoring Trust: The Imperative of Radical Transparency in Ghanaian Governance

The Core Challenge: Rebuilding Trust in Ghanaian Institutions

Trust is not merely an aesthetic quality of a thriving society; it is the fundamental lubricant of economic life. Where trust abounds, transactions are seamless. Where trust is scarce, every interaction devolves into suspicion and negotiation. Ghana currently finds itself navigating this challenging second scenario.

This state of affairs is not a cultural predilection, but rather the cumulative result of systemic institutional weaknesses, an opaque public administration, and a deeply entrenched perception that hidden beneficiaries lurk behind every policy, contract, and fiscal decision. Ghana’s struggle to evolve into a high-trust society stems less from its citizens and more from the operational environment they inhabit.

Empirical evidence supports this assessment. Ghana’s score on the 2024 Corruption Perceptions Index, a sobering 42 out of 100, places the nation at 80th globally – a deteriorating position. In any political economy, trust erodes when institutions fail to uphold minimum standards of credibility. The Ghanaian public has witnessed sufficient instances to conclude that their institutions are neither consistently transparent nor reliably impartial.

Consider, for example, the 2025 revelation concerning over 81,000 suspected “ghost names” on the National Service Authority payroll, contrasted with just over 98,000 legitimate service persons. This payroll alone accounted for GHS 226 million cedis. When a government’s own wage bill becomes a speculative fiction, it is unreasonable to expect citizens to believe in the soundness of its financial systems. Such disclosures do not merely ignite anger; they fundamentally dismantle the trust essential for any functional fiscal framework.

The procurement sector presents a similar dilemma. In November 2025, an IMF assessment characterized Ghana’s public procurement system as “highly prone to corruption,” citing two decades of evidence detailing side-payments, contract manipulation, and inadequate oversight. No nation can expect businesses to trust its market when the fundamental rules of competition appear negotiable. When companies lack confidence in the state’s ability to enforce rules predictably, they adopt rational behaviors common in low-trust environments: hedging, evasion, and prioritizing private gain over public contribution.

The ramifications are tangible, not abstract. Illegal gold mining, widely known as ‘galamsey’, imposes an estimated annual cost of two billion dollars in lost tax revenue on Ghana. This is not minor corruption; it is a systemic hemorrhage that deprives the state of crucial resources vital for national development. It also reinforces the perception that rules apply selectively, contingent on who is involved and who stands to benefit. While the launch of the Ghana Gold Board and a smuggling task force in July 2025 represents a step forward, institutional credibility cannot be restored by gestures alone. It demands systems that ensure every transaction is traceable and every payment accountable.

Even at the highest echelons, trust has been further undermined by high-profile scandals. In June 2025, Interpol issued a red notice for a former finance minister concerning allegations tied to the national cathedral project. Regardless of whether guilt is ultimately established, the optics are unequivocal: when the elite appear to operate above the law, citizens predictably conclude that the state serves its own interests, not theirs.

Survey data corroborates this sentiment. Findings cited by Afrobarometer suggest that many Ghanaians do not believe they can safely report corruption. Civil society organizations, including Transparency International Ghana and the Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition, actively encourage citizens to “resist and report,” yet these appeals often encounter a deeper psychological reality: people will speak out only when they trust the system to protect them. In the absence of such trust, silence prevails.

The Path Forward: Embracing Radical Transparency

Against this backdrop, the assertion that Ghana must transform into a high-trust society is both accurate and, by itself, insufficient. High-trust societies do not materialize through sheer willpower; they are meticulously engineered through deliberate institutional design. The foundational pathway for this transformation is radical transparency – not cosmetic, not selective, but truly radical.

To initiate the repair of trust within Ghanaian society, the government must undertake three crucial first steps:

• 1. Radical Transparency in Public Finance

  The state must render every salary, every government position, every payment, and every budget line publicly accessible. When citizens possess the means to verify the allocation of funds, suspicion naturally gives way to accountability. Had such a system been in place earlier, the “ghost-names” scandal would not have escalated to an industrial scale. Payrolls would have been subjected to citizen scrutiny long before the problem became deeply entrenched.

• 2. Radical Transparency in Public Contracting

  Public procurement is the nexus where public funds and private interests converge. If citizens are unable to ascertain who secured which contract, for what value, and under what terms, they will invariably assume the worst, especially given how frequently such assumptions have proven plausible. The public disclosure of all contracts—prior to bidding, at the point of award, and throughout execution—serves to disrupt the private economies of influence that have historically plagued public contracting. While ongoing discussions surrounding the Procurement Practicing Bill are a welcome development, their impact will be significantly muted without robust public visibility.

• 3. Radical Transparency in Public Payments

  By channeling all public disbursements through a traceable system, the state establishes an indelible audit trail that no official can obscure. Consequently, the government’s plan to electrify all public expenditure by 2026 is far more than a mere technocratic upgrade; it is a vital mechanism for building trust. It signals to citizens that the government is prepared to constrain itself through systems that are more potent than individual personalities. However, this endeavor needs to go further, and a comprehensive proposal will be outlined in the coming days to truly transform Ghana into a high-trust, orderly society.

These outlined reforms are not idealistic. They simply acknowledge that trust functions as a critical economic asset. Ghana has attempted to operate a modern economy with degraded institutional machinery. No economy can achieve sustainable growth without the essential lubricant of trust, and radical transparency is precisely how that lubricant is generated.

Transparency forms the bedrock. It is also the inherent price of credibility. Without credibility, no society can realize its full potential, and the economy will remain perpetually constrained, serving merely as a consumer and labor base for foreign producers.

~ Hene Aku Kwapong