In anticipation of Ghana’s 2024 general elections, the IMANI Centre for Policy and Education has unveiled its latest IMANIFESTO’24 report, a critical analysis of political party manifestoes aimed at equipping citizens with comprehensive insights on party promises.
In an event supported by the British High Commission, IMANI’s leadership presented findings intended to foster a more informed electorate.
Spearheading the discussion, Franklin Cudjoe, IMANI’s Founding President and Chief Executive Officer, and Dennis Asare, Senior Research Associate, provided a striking assessment of the challenges Ghana faces and the need for policy accountability and transparency.
Reflecting on IMANI’s 16-year journey scrutinizing political promises, Franklin Cudjoe recalled the motivation behind the IMANIFESTO initiative.
“You’d have thought that business plans were only meant for corporations. But we’re also well aware that there are certain principles in life that I think guided our thinking at the time. And I’ll just share 2 of them with you. Those 2 are not originally for me; they are originally for a friend of mine, Lawrence Reed.
“And I think the first one essentially is ‘nobody spends somebody else’s money as carefully as he will spend his own. And secondly, the government has nothing to give anybody except what it first takes from somebody and a government that is big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you’ve got”.
Franklin Cudjoe, Founding President and Chief Executive Officer of IMANI Centre for Policy and Education
These principles, he argued, underscore why IMANI continues to demand pragmatic, transparent, and accountable policies from political leaders.
With IMANI’s analysis, the electorate is urged to consider not just what is promised but how it will tangibly impact their lives. “Today, you will see not only what is promised but the financial impact on your pocket”, Mr Cudjoe noted, further appreciating the British High Commission’s support for IMANIFESTO’24 project.
Ghana’s Critical Crossroads and the Need for Accountability
Dennis Asare, a Senior Research Associate of the IMANI Centre for Policy and Education, on the other hand, delivered a sobering state of Ghana’s socio-economic landscape.
According to Mr Asare, the country is at a development crossroads, with over 40% of the population living in multidimensional poverty and widespread public sector corruption crippling progress.
“All global governance indicators for Ghana show a declining performance over the past seven to eight years,” he revealed, citing troubling data from the Corruption Perception Index, World Economic Forum Index, and World Bank Governance Indicators.
For Dennis Asare, these indices highlight issues like regulatory inefficacy, lack of government effectiveness, and pervasive corruption, adding that amidst these issues, recent findings from Afrobarometer reveal that public trust in government is plummeting.
“And so you find it in the first assessment the IMF did when we approached them. They said that even though government effectiveness in Ghana looks better than its peers, because of weak control of corruption and regulatory ineffectiveness, there’s widespread corruption, and because of that, public service delivery is low”.
Dennis Asare Senior Research Associate at IMANI Centre for Policy and Education
“In this context, political manifestoes should reflect the reality of the nation’s hardships and offer realistic solutions,” Mr Asare emphasized. He lamented that despite two decades of public financial reforms, fiscal accountability remains an elusive goal, with fiscal recklessness costing GHS 4.9 million annually—an amount surpassing the budget for crucial social programs.
He pointed out that if financial irregularities within Ministries, Departments, and Agencies were addressed, each child under the school feeding program could receive GHS 6 instead of the current GHS 1.20 meagre amount the government spent on the program, illustrating the staggering impact of mismanagement.
“So this is the glaring picture of where we stand as a country. And so the political party manifestos that you see, as we go through the presentations, I want you to reflect on whether they are actually addressing the structural problems that create that widespread corruption, slow growth, and very high levels of poverty.”
Dennis Asare Senior Research Associate at IMANI Centre for Policy and Education
Evaluating Manifestoes: A Five-Step Process
IMANIFESTO’24’s critical analysis employed a meticulous five-stage methodology, beginning with an in-depth review of party manifestoes. ‘This analysis doesn’t seek to conduct an impact assessment; rather, it examines the feasibility of each promise using available data and secondary information”, Mr Asare explained.
According to him, IMANI analyzed manifestoes from three major political entities—the New Patriotic Party (NPP), the National Democratic Congress (NDC), and the Movement for Change—based on the official policy documents they provided.
He noted that IMANI’s approach refrained from examining statements made by political candidates to avoid accountability issues.
The analysis according to Mr Asare included an innovative “vagueness gauge” to assess how specific or ambiguous the manifesto promises are, asserting that “This gauge helps determine the clarity of each promise, guiding voters to consider not just what is said but how achievable it might be”.
Highlighting Key Promises and Evaluating Feasibility
Focusing on each party’s “anchor promises,” IMANI’s analysis sought to shed light on whether these commitments address the core structural issues—corruption, slow economic growth, and escalating poverty.
Dennis Asare, a Senior Research Associate of the policy think-tank, underscored that if reforms are not expedited to empower the private sector and bolster social protection programs, poverty rates could escalate by 2026, driven by rising inflation and currency depreciation.
IMANI’s analysis called on citizens to evaluate whether manifesto promises represent genuine, actionable solutions. “Political manifestoes are not just a list of aspirations; they lay the groundwork for national programs and budget allocations,” Mr Asare stressed.
He pointed out that IMANI’s prior evaluations indicate that approximately 56% of political party manifesto promises are incorporated into government agendas, impacting policy and budget, hence the need for the critical assessment made by the leading political parties ahead of the elections.
Promoting Issue-Based Elections
The overarching aim of IMANIFESTO according to Dennis Asare is to encourage issue-based voting, underscoring IMANI’s advocates for elections focused on substantive policy rather than emotive or ethnic appeals, urging voters to understand the true implications of each party’s platform.
“We want citizens to know what these promises mean for their future, to help them make informed choices at the polls, So the overarching aim of what we do is that we want to increase citizens’ understanding of the Political Party’s manifesto.
Civil society is the only solution to addressing this government recklessness, fiscal recklessness, and the lack of public accountability that we’ve not been able to achieve. And so we do that at Imani through several products”.
Dennis Asare Senior Research Associate at the IMANI Centre for Policy and Education
IMANI’s IMANIFESTO’24 analysis underscores the urgent need for political leaders to advance solutions that resonate with the realities of Ghanaians’ everyday challenges.
IMANI’s assessment calls on both politicians and voters to commit to a future defined by transparency, accountability, and feasible development plans that serve the common good.
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