Finance Minister Dr Cassiel Ato Forson has renewed the government’s projection that the Accra-Kumasi Expressway will create about 30,000 direct and indirect jobs, reviving a debate over what the number actually represents before main construction has begun.
The 2026 Budget first placed the figure in the government’s infrastructure programme, alongside expectations that the expressway will cut travel time and reduce transport costs by nearly 40%. “The Accra-Kumasi Expressway project alone is expected to create over 30,000 direct and indirect jobs during construction.”
The renewed claim is still a forecast, not an employment count. The Ghana Armed Forces completed clearing the 175.6-kilometre right-of-way this month, but Roads and Highways Minister Governs Kwame Agbodza said the project is now moving through detailed design and procurement before contractors are selected.
That timing matters: until construction contracts, labour schedules and payrolls exist, no project-level evidence can yet confirm how many workers the expressway will employ.
Dr Theo Acheampong, a Technical Adviser to the finance minister, has responded to doubts by setting out an illustrative job-year calculation. His argument shows how a project of this scale could support employment through construction and domestic suppliers.
It also exposes the assumptions behind the headline figure: labour’s share of project spending, average employment costs, the construction period and how much procurement remains inside Ghana.
Thirty Thousand Is a Forecast, Not a Payroll
Dr Acheampong’s explanation uses job-years rather than a simple count of people. One worker employed full-time for a year represents one job-year; two people employed for six months also amount to one job-year.
Under his central scenario, roughly 10% of project spending goes to on-site labour and average annual employment cost is about US$10,000, generating an estimated 38,000 direct job-years.
He adds about 12,000 to 14,000 indirect job-years through quarrying, cement, haulage and services, taking the illustrative total to roughly 50,000 job-years. “So 30,000 is not an exaggeration: it is the floor,” he argues.
But job-years are not the same as 50,000 people employed simultaneously, nor are they permanent jobs. The distinction should accompany any public claim about the project’s employment effect.
Local Procurement Could Change the Outcome
The strongest part of the employment case is also the easiest to test later: local procurement. A larger domestic share of spending on labour, aggregates, cement, haulage, engineering and other services should support more jobs in Ghana.
A higher import share for machinery, specialist inputs, steel or bitumen reduces that domestic employment effect. Dr Acheampong estimates that moving an additional ten percentage points of procurement from imports to Ghanaian suppliers could add about 4,000 job-years.
That number is itself model-dependent, but the mechanism is straightforward. The eventual employment multiplier will depend on what contractors actually buy locally, not on the size of the project budget alone.
The size of that domestic multiplier will also vary by input. Locally quarried aggregates and labour-intensive services retain more spending inside the economy than imported capital equipment.
Publishing major procurement shares would therefore allow the public to see whether the jobs claim is being supported by the project’s actual purchasing pattern rather than by a model alone.
That is why the expressway’s completed right-of-way clearing is only a preparatory milestone. The next detailed designs, bills of quantities, procurement packages and contracts will determine whether the project is labour-intensive and how much expenditure reaches Ghanaian firms.
Independent Verification Still Matters
An independent review by the Centre for Policy Studies has already cautioned that the 30,000 figure remains prospective because the project has not reached full construction. Its broader point is useful: infrastructure mobilisation can be visible before employment outcomes are measurable.
The International Labour Organization’s road-sector guidance similarly distinguishes direct, indirect, induced and longer-term employment and recommends combining project records with multiplier analysis.
Once work begins, credible reporting should therefore publish worker numbers, worker-months or job-years, occupational categories and the domestic share of major procurement.
The Bigger Return Comes After Construction
Even if the 30,000 projection is eventually achieved, temporary construction employment should not become the main test of a multibillion-dollar expressway. The larger economic return should come from lower freight costs, shorter journeys, safer transport, wider market access and private investment around logistics and industrial nodes.
Those longer-run gains are central to the Big Push infrastructure case. They are also harder to promise than jobs during construction because they depend on maintenance, tolling, complementary investment and how businesses respond to improved connectivity.
For now, the most defensible conclusion is narrower. Thirty thousand jobs is economically plausible as a project forecast, but it is not yet an observed result.
The contracts will reveal the labour and local-content assumptions; the payrolls will show how many people work; and the completed corridor will determine whether Ghana receives the lasting productivity gain needed to justify the investment.
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