Ghana’s Ministry of Finance moved on 10 September 2026 to defend the employment projections attached to the proposed Accra-Kumasi Expressway, with Technical Advisor Dr Theo Acheampong arguing that the government’s estimate of 30,000 direct and indirect jobs is not only credible but deliberately conservative, and that the real employment impact could reach 70,000 job-years over a 30-month construction cycle.
A Methodology Built on Job-Years, Not Headcounts
The debate was triggered by Finance Minister Dr Cassiel Ato Forson’s claim that the expressway would generate approximately 30,000 direct and indirect jobs. Critics questioned the figure. Dr Acheampong’s response, published on Facebook, reframed the entire discussion around a standard infrastructure metric: the job-year.
One job-year equals one full-time position sustained for 12 months. It is the unit used by development finance institutions, including the African Development Bank, when assessing labour returns on capital infrastructure. Dr Acheampong applied this framework directly to the Accra-Kumasi project’s projected cost structure.
He estimated the project’s labour component at between US$400 million and US$500 million. Using a blended annual employment cost of US$10,000 per worker, which includes accommodation, transport and safety equipment, he derived a direct employment figure of between 38,000 and 48,000 job-years. His conservative calculation used the lower bound: 38,000 job-years.
“So 30,000 is not an exaggeration: it is the floor,” Dr Acheampong wrote.
Indirect Employment: Quarrying, Cement, Haulage and Services
Beyond direct site labour, Dr Acheampong mapped the indirect employment chain that large-scale road construction activates across the domestic economy. His argument is straightforward: infrastructure spending does not stop at the construction site.
He estimated domestic procurement of materials and services at between US$1.2 billion and US$1.5 billion. Applied to sectors including quarrying, cement production, haulage and catering, this spending could support a further 12,000 to 14,000 job-years.
On the last point, Dr Acheampong was precise: “By my estimate, every ten percentage points of project spending shifted from imports to Ghanaian suppliers adds roughly 4,000 job-years.” That figure gives policymakers a concrete lever, and a reason to scrutinise procurement terms before contracts are signed.
Labour Turnover and the Snapshot Problem
Dr Acheampong also addressed a common misreading of infrastructure employment data: the difference between the number of workers on site at any given moment and the total number of individuals who earn wages from a project over its full duration.
Over the expressway’s estimated 30-month construction period, he projects approximately 20,000 workers employed at peak at any single point in time. But because of normal labour turnover, skills rotation and phased construction activities, more than 50,000 individuals could earn wages from the project before its completion.
This distinction matters for policy. Governments and investors who benchmark only peak headcount systematically undercount the employment return on infrastructure investment. The job-year metric corrects for this by aggregating labour input across the full project timeline.
Long-Term Corridor Development: Logistics Hubs and Market Access
The Accra-Kumasi corridor is Ghana’s primary commercial spine, linking the capital’s port and financial infrastructure to Kumasi’s manufacturing, trading and agricultural hinterland. Dr Acheampong argued that the expressway’s employment impact extends well beyond the construction phase.
Improved connectivity along the corridor creates conditions for logistics hubs, industrial parks and expanded market access, each of which generates sustained employment independent of construction activity. These are not guaranteed outcomes. Dr Acheampong acknowledged that the scale of longer-term benefits depends significantly on how much project expenditure is retained within Ghana rather than repatriated through imported equipment, foreign contractor margins and expatriate labour costs.
Within the ECOWAS trade zone, the corridor’s upgrade also carries regional implications. The Accra-Kumasi route feeds into broader West African road networks connecting Ghana to Burkina Faso and beyond, forming part of the Trans-West African Coastal Highway system. Improved corridor efficiency reduces transit costs for landlocked ECOWAS members and strengthens Ghana’s position as a logistics gateway, a role it competes for directly with Côte d’Ivoire’s Abidjan-based corridor infrastructure.
Accountability Mechanisms: What Dr Acheampong Is Recommending
Dr Acheampong did not limit his intervention to defending the projection. He outlined three specific governance measures he considers essential to converting employment estimates into verified outcomes:
The third recommendation is the most consequential from a governance standpoint. Ghana has a documented history of infrastructure projects where employment projections at announcement stage were never subjected to systematic ex-post verification. Payroll-based auditing would close that gap and establish a precedent applicable to future public investment programmes.
Investment Credibility and the Procurement Question
For investors and development finance partners evaluating the project, the employment methodology debate is secondary to a more fundamental question: what share of project value will be contracted to Ghanaian firms, and under what terms? Dr Acheampong’s own sensitivity analysis answers this implicitly. A ten-percentage-point shift from import spending to domestic procurement generates 4,000 additional job-years. Across the full project, procurement decisions will determine whether the expressway functions as a genuine domestic economic stimulus or primarily as a capital transfer to foreign contractors.
Ghana’s Ministry of Finance has not yet published the full procurement framework for the expressway. Until it does, the 30,000-job figure, however methodologically sound, remains a projection contingent on contracting decisions that have not been made public. Dr Acheampong’s recommended accountability mechanisms, particularly payroll verification and local sourcing mandates, provide the institutional scaffolding that would allow the projection to be tested against reality once construction begins.
