Ghana exports too much of what it could process, manufacture and sell at a higher value.
It is a simple sentence that explains 67 years of economic frustration. We export raw cocoa and import chocolate. We export raw gold and import jewelry. We export bauxite and import aluminum sheets. We export cashew nuts at $1,200 per ton and import roasted cashew at $12,000 per ton. We have lithium for the world’s batteries but no battery factory. We have some of the world’s best shea butter but we sell them in sacks, not in creams.
Every sack of raw export is a job exported. Every container of unprocessed mineral is a factory we refused to build.
President John Dramani Mahama’s 24-Hour Economy is designed to end that paradox. Its long-term vision is clear; build an economy that produces more locally, adds more value to its resources, and competes more strongly across regional and global markets. From serving domestic demand first, to exporting finished goods to West Africa and beyond, the 24-Hour Economy is Ghana’s industrial independence plan; and its most natural, most proven, and most strategic partner for this transformation is China.
THE COST OF RAW: WHY GHANA MUST RESET
In 2023, Ghana earned about $3.2 billion from cocoa beans, but the global chocolate market was worth $130 billion. Ghana provides 20% of the world’s cocoa but less than 1% of chocolate. Gold accounts for 45% of our export earnings, yet we refine less than 10% locally. We are Africa’s second largest producer of cashew, yet we process less than 15% at home.
This model has three fatal flaws:
First, when world cocoa prices fall, Ghana suffers, even though we sweat to produce the cocoa beans. Second, it creates seasonal, low-wage jobs, not 24-hour high-skill industrial jobs. Third, it makes us import-dependent. Foreign exchange earned from primary commodity exports is immediately absorbed by the importation of expensive finished goods to our disadvantage
The 24-Hour Economy breaks this cycle with three shifts: Produce, Process, and Power.
Produce enough for Ghana’s 34 million people first, to cut the $2 billion food import bill. Process our raw materials 24 hours a day in three shifts in industrial parks across the country. And Power those factories with affordable energy, efficient ports that facilitates the export of products from Tamale to Dakar overnight.
This is not theory. China did exactly this 40 years ago.
WHY CHINA UNDERSTANDS GHANA’S PAIN BETTER THAN ANYONE
In 1978, China was poorer than Ghana. It exported raw silk, raw tea, and unprocessed minerals. Then it made a strategic decision, no more export of raw products. It built Special Economic Zones, invited technology, welcomed new technologies, insisted on processing at home, and ran its factories 24 hours a day.
In four decades, China moved from exporting raw materials to exporting high-speed rail, electric vehicles, and solar panels. It lifted 800 million people out of poverty not by exporting more raw, but by adding value.
That is the lesson Ghana is applying. And China is the only partner that can provide all four essential components that Ghana needs at once, thus Capital, Technology, Market, and Speed.
Under the FOCAC Ten-Partnership Action Plan announced in Beijing in 2024, President Xi Jinping pledged $51 billion for Africa’s industrialisation, green development, and modernisation. For Ghana, this is not aid. It is a toolbox for our Reset.
Ghana-China cooperation makes the 24-Hour Economy real
1. COCOA TO CHOCOLATE, CASHEW TO SNACKS: THE AGRO-PROCESSING REVOLUTION
Ghana produces 850,000 tons of cocoa. China is now the world’s fastest-growing chocolate market, with consumption growing 15% annually. Under the new Zero Tariff for LDCs and growing Africa-China market access, Ghana and China can do more than trade beans.
Imagine Chinese food technology companies like COFCO partnering with Ghana’s Cocoa Processing Company in Tema to run three shifts, producing cocoa powder, cocoa butter, and finished chocolate for Ghanaian schools, ECOWAS supermarkets, and Chinese e-commerce platforms like JD.com.
Same for cashew. In Wenchi and Techiman, where cashew rots for lack of buyers, Chinese machinery that costs $200,000 can set up a factory employing 500 women, shelling and packaging cashew that sells for 10 times the raw price on the world market. The 24-Hour Economy’s incentive of tax rebates for companies that run night shifts makes such a factory profitable.
China’s secret to poverty alleviation was “one village, one product” and e-commerce to the world. Ghana’s 24-Hour Economy adopts the same – “one district, one industrial anchor.” Chinese e-commerce is the perfect off-taker.
2. GOLD, BAUXITE, LITHIUM AND MANGANESE: FROM DIGGING TO MANUFACTURING
Ghana is Africa’s largest gold producer, has millions of tons of bauxite, millions of tons of manganese, and newly discovered lithium. For decades we have dug and shipped.
The Reset demands that we refine, smelt, and manufacture.
Here, Ghana-China cooperation is moving from extraction to co-production. The Ghana Integrated Aluminium Development Corporation [GIADEC] partnership with Chinese firms to build an alumina refinery means Ghana will finally turn bauxite into aluminum, then into roofing sheets, car parts, and cables locally, instead of shipping rocks to China.
For lithium, Ghana has been explicit, no raw lithium export. We want a battery value chain. Chinese EV giant BYD, the world’s largest battery maker, needs lithium. Ghana needs battery technology. Under the 24-Hour Economy, Ghana can negotiate what Indonesia did, you can have our lithium if you build the refinery and battery plant in Ghana, training Ghanaians to run it 24 hours. That plant can then serve the entire ECOWAS EV market, which is projected to hit 5 million vehicles by the year 2030.
3. THE INVISIBLE INFRASTRUCTURE OF VALUE ADDITION
Value addition fails without these factors; efficient ports, reliable power, and seamless payment.
On ports, Chinese-financed expansion of Tema Port has tripled capacity to 3.5 million TEUs. But a port that closes at 5pm cannot power a 24-Hour Economy. The next step of Ghana-China cooperation is making Tema a true Smart 24-Hour Port with Chinese scanning technology, digital clearance, and cold chain logistics, such that processed pineapples from Nsawam can reach the port at 2am and be on a ship by 6am.
On power, you cannot run three shifts without power. Chinese companies built Bui Dam and Kaleo Solar. The next phase is rooftop solar for industrial parks and battery storage for night shifts, exactly what Chinese firms offer to the world.
On payment, China’s greatest export may not be hardware but digital systems. Ghana’s Mobile Money interoperability is African-leading. Linking it with China’s cross-border payment systems and e-commerce platforms means a woman processing shea butter in Tamale at midnight can receive an order from Guangzhou in real time, ship her products via smart port to China in the shortest possible time.
4. BEYOND TRADE: THE ZERO TARIFF OPPORTUNITY
In 2024, China announced Zero Tariff on 100% of tariff lines for LDCs, and expanded market access for Africa. It means if Ghana processes, China will buy. If we process cashew into packaged snacks, cocoa into chocolate, bauxite into aluminum products, those products now have preferential entry into the 1.4 billion-person Chinese market. But only if we process.
Ghana’s strategy under the AfCFTA is identical. Process in Ghana, sell duty-free to 1.4 billion Africans. Add both together, Ghana-China cooperation gives Ghanaian factories access to 2.8 billion consumers. No raw bean can do that.
A NEW SOCIAL CONTRACT
The 24-Hour Economy is more than an economic policy. It is a social contract; we will no longer export our youth’s jobs in raw sacks. We will keep the value at home.
China proves it can be done. Ghana has the raw materials, the young workforce, the AfCFTA headquarters, and the democratic stability. China has the technology, the capital, and the world’s biggest market for value-added goods.
The story is no longer Ghana exporting to China. The story is Ghana and China manufacturing together, in Ghana, running 24 hours a day, for Ghanaians first, for West Africa second, and for the world third.
From raw to rich. From exporting crops to exporting brands. That is the Reset. That is the 24-Hour Economy. And that is the future of Ghana-China cooperation.
Written by: Moses Sackie, Head of Information, Embassy of Ghana, People’s Republic of China.
