Ghana’s 24-Hour Economy is confronting a central employment question: whether the programme can move beyond flagship investments and help existing small and medium-sized enterprises expand output, hire more workers and become more productive.
National Development Planning Commission Chairman Dr Nii Moi Thompson has brought that issue to the centre of the policy debate, urging government to give smaller businesses greater attention as implementation deepens.
Job creation does not begin only when a new factory is commissioned. Existing firms hire when demand, finance, reliable power, technology and market access allow them to add shifts, machinery and workers.
Large investments remain essential for infrastructure, exports and industrial capacity, but often carry long gestation periods before employment reaches scale. A strategy focused only on headline projects can leave a near-term jobs gap.
Dr Thompson put the trade-off plainly: “You don’t put all your eggs in the big businesses per se.” His point is not an argument against large firms.
It is an argument for a portfolio approach to employment, in which anchor investors coexist with thousands of smaller businesses that supply inputs, distribute products, provide services and absorb labour throughout the economy.
Existing Firms Can Shorten the Jobs Lag
The economics rests on employment elasticity: how strongly employment responds when output grows. Ghana can record robust GDP growth without a comparable increase in jobs when expansion is concentrated in capital-intensive activities.
By contrast, a productive SME that wins new orders may add workers quickly because its plant, customer base and management already exist. Helping viable firms scale can shorten the distance between macroeconomic recovery and household employment.
The scale of the small-firm economy makes that argument consequential. The GSS 2024 Integrated Business Establishment Survey counted 1.87 million establishments, including 1.69 million micro and 159,111 small businesses.
Together, micro and small units represented about 99% of establishments. The statistic does not measure job quality, but it shows why productivity gains across viable small firms can matter nationally.
This is especially relevant as government tries to convert improved macroeconomic conditions into a New Economy centred on production and jobs.
The Vaultz News has already noted that implementation needs measurable outcomes rather than spending announcements. For SMEs, those outcomes should include net jobs, real earnings, sales growth, exports, productivity per worker and business survival after public support ends.
Firm creation alone does not guarantee durable employment. Many new businesses remain small or exit quickly. Policy creates more value when productive enterprises can cross from micro and informal operations into formal, medium-sized firms with stronger management, technology and access to larger markets.
Finance Cannot Substitute for Productivity
Access to capital remains a major SME constraint, and the Presidency’s 24-Hour Economy incentives include duty-free machinery for qualifying businesses and faster port clearance. Development-finance institutions are also repositioning lending towards production, exports and employment, including Ghana Exim Bank’s shift toward projects aligned with the programme.
Cheaper finance, however, cannot rescue a weak business model indefinitely. Credit creates lasting employment when it funds machinery, working capital, certification, technology or market expansion that raises revenue-generating capacity.
If concessional funding is distributed without productivity tests, repayment discipline and market demand, the economy can socialise credit risk without creating competitive businesses.
Policy should therefore connect financing to value chains. A garment factory may need local logistics, packaging, maintenance and training suppliers. An agro-processing plant needs farmers, aggregators, cold storage and transport.
Anchor firms create a stronger multiplier when procurement develops competitive local suppliers rather than relying overwhelmingly on imported inputs.
Longer Hours Need Cheaper Inputs and Demand
A 24-hour economy is not simply an instruction for firms to remain open longer. Additional shifts make economic sense only when expected revenue exceeds the extra cost of labour, electricity, security, transport and inventory.
A factory or logistics company will not profitably operate through the night because policy encourages it; it will do so when orders, customers and infrastructure make the additional hours commercially viable.
That is why electricity reliability, transport, digital payments, public safety and night-time mobility belong at the heart of the jobs strategy. Government’s 24-hour market model, combining trading space with storage, banking, security and transport services, reflects part of this logic.
The challenge is to extend the same enabling environment to productive firms beyond designated facilities.
Measure Jobs by Quality, Not Announcements
Government should ultimately judge SME participation by net employment, not gross announcements. If one supported firm hires while competitors contract because finance or procurement is distorted, the net gain may be far smaller than the headline. Wage quality, hours worked, worker productivity and job durability matter too.
Putting SMEs at the centre therefore does not mean protecting every small firm from competition. It means lowering structural barriers so efficient firms can scale while allowing capital and labour to move away from persistently unproductive activities.
Ghana’s employment challenge requires more businesses, but above all better businesses. The 24-Hour Economy will succeed when smaller firms become productive enough to operate longer, pay better wages and compete for markets without permanent state support.
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