Ghana Is Trying to Make Itself Cheaper. Three Big Projects Could Change the Cost of Doing Business

A new Accra to Kumasi expressway, an expanded Tema port and a planned 1,200 megawatt power plant are being presented as separate infrastructure projects. Look closer and they form something much bigger: an attempt to reduce the cost of moving, making and selling things in Ghana.

The price of almost everything in Ghana has a journey behind it

Before a bag of rice reaches a market in Kumasi, before a spare part reaches a mechanic in Tamale, before a Ghanaian manufacturer exports a finished product, money has already been spent moving something.

There is the ship.

There is the port.

There is clearance.

There is storage.

There is the truck.

There is fuel.

There are tyres and repairs.

There is electricity.

There are delays.

And there is the cost of all the things that go wrong along the way.

Ghana is now building or planning three pieces of infrastructure that could attack some of these costs at the same time.

The Accra to Kumasi Expressway is designed to make the movement of goods across the country faster.

The expansion of Tema Port is designed to make Ghana a larger and more efficient maritime gateway.

And the government's planned 1,200 megawatt gas fired power plant is intended to increase electricity supply while reducing generation costs.

Individually, each project matters.

Together, they could change something more fundamental.

The cost of doing business in Ghana.

The road is more than a road

The Accra to Kumasi Expressway is being described by the government as Ghana's economic spine.

The project will stretch 198.7 kilometres and become the country's first modern six lane bidirectional Class A expressway. Government says the new alignment will reduce the current travel distance by more than 50 kilometres, halve travel time between Accra and Kumasi and reduce transport costs by nearly 40 percent.

The project is also expected to create more than 30,000 direct and indirect jobs during construction.

Eight major interchanges, three major bridges and four service areas are planned along the route.

But the significance of the road is not simply that someone travelling from Accra to Kumasi might get there faster.

The real question is:

What happens when goods can move faster?

A farmer in the Ashanti or Eastern Region does not sell only the crop.

The price of getting that crop to market is part of the product.

If a truck spends fewer hours travelling, the operator burns less fuel and spends less time on the road. A vehicle can potentially make more trips. Maintenance costs can fall. Delivery schedules become more predictable.

For agricultural products, time can also mean money lost to spoilage.

The same road works in the opposite direction.

Imported machinery, spare parts, fertiliser, medicine, building materials and consumer goods arriving through Tema have to leave the coast and reach customers across Ghana.

A port can be world class at the shoreline and still be constrained if the road carrying its cargo inland is slow and unreliable.

This is why the expressway matters to the port.

It is the land connection between Ghana's largest maritime gateway and one of the country's largest commercial centres.

Then there is Tema

Tema Port has been undergoing a transformation of its own.

The port's expanded container terminal is being developed around a capacity of 3.5 million twenty foot equivalent units, known as TEUs. GPHA says the wider development programme is responding to growing local and transit cargo volumes and future trade demand.

That capacity matters because Ghana is not only importing for Ghanaians.

The country's larger ambition is to become a gateway for the wider West African market.

A container arriving at Tema may contain machinery for a Ghanaian factory.

It may contain consumer goods destined for Kumasi.

It may contain industrial inputs.

Or it may eventually be cargo travelling onward into the Sahel.

The economic opportunity therefore extends beyond the port gates.

A busy port creates demand for freight forwarders, truck operators, warehouses, customs services, insurance companies, banks, mechanics, fuel stations, logistics technology companies and thousands of other businesses.

But there is another side to the equation.

Capacity is not the same thing as efficiency.

If cargo is sitting in a port because of delays, expensive charges or administrative bottlenecks, the cost eventually travels with the cargo.

The Ghana Shippers' Authority has been working with stakeholders on precisely this problem, with the cost of doing business at Ghana's ports remaining an important concern for traders and businesses.

That is why the success of Tema cannot ultimately be measured only by the number of containers it can handle.

It has to be measured by how cheaply and quickly those containers can move through Ghana.

And Ghana is thinking beyond Tema

The proposed Keta Port introduces another dimension.

In June 2026, the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority said 42 local and international investors had expressed interest in the project following approval of its Environmental Impact Assessment.

GPHA says the proposed port is intended to serve as a transit trade hub for Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, connected to the Eastern Corridor and future railway extensions.

That is significant.

Ghana would not simply be building another harbour for Ghanaian imports and exports.

It would be trying to capture a larger share of the trade flowing into and out of landlocked countries that need access to the sea.

But Keta is still a developing project. The approval of the environmental assessment and investor interest are important steps, not evidence that a fully operational commercial port already exists.

Ports take years to develop.

GPHA itself has made that point.

Then comes the electricity question

Roads move things.

Ports connect Ghana to the world.

But factories need something else before they can produce.

Electricity.

This may be the most important part of the equation.

In April 2025, Finance Minister Cassiel Ato Forson described Ghana's energy sector as the country's "biggest economic risk".

He said the sector was carrying a financial shortfall of approximately $2 billion and argued that inefficiencies, particularly in distribution, were ultimately being passed on to ordinary Ghanaians through high tariffs.

A few months later, he repeated the argument, saying the energy sector remained the biggest risk to Ghana's economy even though immediate budgetary pressures had been addressed.

The government's response includes a major new power project.

Ghana is developing a 1,200 megawatt state owned combined cycle gas fired power plant at Kafodzidzi Abrobeano in the Central Region.

The first phase is expected to provide 600 megawatts and is scheduled for commissioning in 2028.

In July 2026, Forson said the government expected the plant to lower electricity generation costs and contribute to a reduction in electricity tariffs of between 10 and 20 percent.

The government also says direct procurement of the gas turbines from GE Vernova could save between 35 and 45 percent compared with third party procurement.

Those tariff reductions are government projections. They are not yet savings that households or factories are receiving.

That distinction matters.

But why does electricity matter to the price of food?

Consider a tomato farmer.

The farmer may not use much electricity directly.

But the tomatoes eventually enter a system that does.

Cold storage.

Processing.

Packaging.

Warehousing.

Retail refrigeration.

Water pumping.

Transport infrastructure.

Now consider a factory producing plastic packaging for those tomatoes.

That factory uses electricity.

The supermarket storing them uses electricity.

The office managing the distribution network uses electricity.

The telecommunications network coordinating payments and deliveries uses electricity.

Energy costs therefore spread through an economy in ways that are often invisible to the final consumer.

The cheaper and more reliable the underlying energy becomes, the more room businesses potentially have to reduce prices, increase production or invest in expansion.

But again, cheaper generation does not automatically mean cheaper electricity bills.

Ghana's electricity tariff system contains several cost components, and PURC's tariff methodology takes factors including fuel costs, exchange rates, inflation and generation related costs into account.

The energy sector's distribution and financial problems also have to be addressed.

That is why Forson's argument has consistently gone beyond building another power plant.

He has also spoken about improving efficiency, reforming the power sector and bringing greater private sector participation into procurement and distribution.

Put the three projects together

Now imagine a Ghanaian manufacturer.

It imports a machine through Tema.

The port processes the container efficiently.

The machine leaves Tema.

The truck reaches Kumasi faster using the new expressway.

The factory installs the machine.

The factory now has access to more reliable electricity at a lower generation cost.

It produces more.

It employs more people.

It buys more Ghanaian inputs.

It sends finished products back toward Tema.

The products are exported.

Foreign exchange comes into Ghana.

That is the economic chain these projects could create.

Port. Road. Power. Production. Jobs. Exports.

The important word is could.

None of this happens automatically.

Infrastructure creates the possibility.

The quality of execution determines whether Ghana captures the benefit.

What could this mean for the ordinary Ghanaian?

The first benefit may not be a dramatic fall in the price of everything on the supermarket shelf.

Economies do not work that neatly.

The more realistic possibility is that several smaller costs begin to fall at different points in the supply chain.

A truck operator spends less time travelling.

A wholesaler faces fewer delays.

A manufacturer spends less on electricity.

An importer gets cargo out of the port faster.

A farmer loses less produce.

A factory can run additional shifts.

A business can carry less inventory because deliveries are more predictable.

Each saving may look small.

Together, they can become significant.

And if businesses face lower costs while competition remains strong, some of those savings can eventually reach consumers.

The bigger opportunity is industry

This may ultimately matter more than the immediate consumer price question.

Ghana has spent decades exporting raw materials while importing many of the finished products made from them.

Cocoa leaves Ghana.

Chocolate comes back.

Bauxite leaves Ghana.

Aluminium products come back.

Gold leaves Ghana.

Finished industrial products are imported.

The economics of industrialisation are therefore brutally simple.

If electricity is expensive, production is expensive.

If transport is expensive, production is expensive.

If imported machinery takes weeks to clear, production is expensive.

If exporting finished goods is expensive, Ghanaian factories struggle to compete.

The combination of cheaper power and cheaper logistics attacks several of these problems at once.

Forson has explicitly connected reliable and affordable power to Africa's industrialisation challenge, arguing that the continent cannot industrialise without dependable electricity. He has also called for Africa to move from exporting raw materials toward refining and processing them into higher value products.

That is where the road and the port become more than transport infrastructure.

They become part of industrial policy.

The real test will be what Ghana produces

A new expressway does not create an industrial economy by itself.

Neither does a bigger port.

Neither does a 1,200 megawatt power plant.

The real test is what happens around them.

Do factories appear along the corridor?

Do agro processors locate closer to farming communities?

Do warehouses and logistics centres emerge?

Do Ghanaian manufacturers become more competitive?

Does more cargo move through Tema and eventually Keta?

Does Ghana capture more transit trade from the Sahel?

Do electricity savings reach businesses?

Do lower logistics costs reach consumers?

Do wages rise alongside productivity?

Those are the questions that will determine whether these projects become infrastructure monuments or economic infrastructure.

Ghana's opportunity is to lower the cost of being Ghanaian

For the ordinary person, the promise is ultimately very simple.

A cheaper economy.

Not because government tells traders to reduce their prices.

Not because a politician announces that the cost of living has fallen.

But because the cost of producing and moving things becomes structurally lower.

That is the real ambition hidden inside these projects.

The Accra to Kumasi Expressway could reduce the cost and uncertainty of moving goods across the country.

Tema's expanded port could reduce the constraints on Ghana's maritime trade and strengthen the country's position as a regional logistics hub.

Keta, if successfully developed, could give Ghana another maritime gateway and deepen its connection to the Sahel.

The 1,200 megawatt power plant could increase generation capacity and, according to government projections, reduce electricity generation costs and tariffs.

Together, they point toward one economic idea:

Ghana wants to become cheaper to produce in, cheaper to trade through and cheaper to connect to.

If that happens, the biggest beneficiary should not simply be the infrastructure itself.

It should be the Ghanaian economy built around it.

And ultimately, the Ghanaian who buys the food, pays the electricity bill, employs the worker, runs the shop, drives the truck, operates the factory and tries to build a business in Ghana.

That is where the real return on these billions will be measured.