Nana kweku Ofori Atta
Security consultant
In every election cycle in Ghana, presidential candidates make familiar pledges-jobs for the youth, skills training, employment opportunities. Yet beneath the promises lies a paradox: Ghana’s unemployment crisis is not entirely natural. It is, to a large extent, artificially created by how the nation treats its civil service and sidesteps its real economic frontiers.
Instead of pursuing bold expansion in agriculture, ICT, mining, manufacturing, sanitation, and metal fabrication, successive governments have repeatedly turned the civil service into the epicenter of their employment policies. What has emerged is not an expansion of jobs but a recycling of jobs-a practice that has hollowed out institutional memory, undermined professionalism, and entrenched political patronage.
Ghana’s 1992 Constitution is unambiguous about the protection of civil servants. The Public Services Commission is tasked with ensuring merit-based appointments, promotions, and discipline. Civil servants are, in principle, shielded from arbitrary dismissal and are supposed to enjoy tenure unless removed for misconduct or through due process. The Civil Service Act and related laws go further, spelling out fair disciplinary measures and the right to a hearing before any removal. These safeguards were designed to insulate public servants from the whims of political power. Yet, in practice, the very spirit of these provisions has been routinely violated. With each change of government, the axe falls on civil servants believed to be sympathetic to the opposition. Careers built over decades are wiped away overnight, not because of incompetence, but because of perceived partisan alignment. This is not just unjust, it is economically destructive.
Across the world, mature democracies have long resolved this tension. In countries like the United Kingdom, civil servants are permanent, politically neutral professionals. Governments may appoint their own advisers and ministers, but the career bureaucracy remains untouched, providing continuity and institutional knowledge. India’s civil service, through its Union Public Service Commission, ensures that highly skilled administrators serve across governments without fear of partisan reprisals. In most OECD countries, political appointees are narrowly defined, while the bulk of civil servants are hired, promoted, and dismissed strictly on merit. These global norms protect both the integrity of governance and the professional dignity of public officers. They also ensure that a government’s focus is not on reshuffling personnel but on expanding industries and sectors that generate real jobs and grow the economy.
When political purges dominate employment policy, the results are tragic:
•*Institutional Amnesia:* Experienced officers are discarded, and new ones spend years relearning lessons already known.
•*Distorted Labour Market:* Instead of creating new opportunities in productive sectors, jobs are recycled within the civil service, fueling a false narrative that government is addressing unemployment.
•*Erosion of Public Trust:* Citizens no longer see public service as a space of meritocracy, but as a partisan prize that comes and goes with political tides.
This cycle creates an economy where real growth lags behind, while unemployment remains a convenient political talking point.
If Ghana is serious about tackling unemployment, it must first reform how its civil service is treated. Some urgent steps include:
1.Codifying a Protected Career Tier: Civil servants in core technical and administrative roles must be insulated by law from partisan dismissal.
2.Independent Oversight Tribunals: Dismissals should go through an independent tribunal that demands written reasons and affords fair hearings.
3.Separation of Political Appointees from Career Staff: Ministers and advisers may change, but directors, administrators, and specialists must remain untouched.
4.Promotion of Neutrality and Ethics: Civil servants should be bound by codes of impartiality, ensuring they serve any government with loyalty to the state—not to parties.
5.Sectoral Investment: Instead of bloating the bureaucracy, governments should prioritize agriculture, ICT, sanitation, mining, and manufacturing—sectors that hold the real key to job creation.
If President Mahama is truly committed to “resetting Ghana,” then the starting point must be ending the political recycling of civil servants. Resetting Ghana means building a system where employment growth comes not from partisan reshuffles but from genuine sectoral expansion. It also means listening. Civil society organizations, research institutions, and think tanks have produced extensive data and proposals on how ICT, technological innovation, agriculture, and security can serve as engines of growth. Yet too often, these voices are drowned out by political rhetoric. Ghana’s future cannot be secured by the old cycle of sackings and replacements. It will only be secured by a new model of governance—one that protects civil servants, expands real economic sectors, and harnesses the knowledge already available within our society.
If the next administration is to truly reset Ghana, let it begin not with recycled jobs but with new industries, new protections, and new possibilities.
