Assessing the Extent to Which the Government of Ghana’s 24-Hour Economy and the Accelerated Export Development Programme Address Unemployment In Ghana Through the 1:3:3 Framework

Assessing the Extent to Which the Government of Ghana’s 24-Hour Economy and the Accelerated Export Development Programme Address Unemployment In Ghana Through the 1:3:3 Framework 

Ghana’s 24-Hour Economy and the Accelerated Export Development Programme can be assessed as a major but conditional policy response to the persistent economic problem of unemployment in the country. At its core, the policy seeks to expand production, deepen value addition, stimulate exports, encourage innovation and industrialization, and create more jobs by encouraging economic activities to continue beyond the traditional limited working hours. In principle, this makes the policy a labour-absorption or unemployment curbing strategy. However, in economic view, the policy does not automatically solve unemployment. Instead, it offers a potential strategy which has its actual effectiveness in addressing unemployment as conditional. If it will succeed, it depends on whether Ghana can transform continuous production into decent, sustainable, and fairly distributed employment. The 1:3:3 framework, which suggests that one productive setup, in terms of job, can support and maintain three persons across three shifts, will therefore serve as a useful tool for testing this claim.

Unemployment in Ghana, especially among the youth, remains one of the most pressing economic and social challenges. This crisis manifests not only as open unemployment, but also a broad underemployment, informality, low productivity, and weak employment structures, fundamentally revealing a severe mismatch between the supply of the labour market and the demand structure of domestic economic activity. According to the 2025 Annual Household Income and Expenditure Survey [AHIES] the national average unemployment rate stands at 12.8%, with labor market vulnerabilities acutely concentrated among females, urban dwellers, and the 15-24 youth demographic. Furthermore, 86%-87% of total employment remains structurally locked in the informal sector, driving exceptionally high rates of vulnerable employment across the economy. 

This structural mismatch is further widened because Ghana's recent economic growth has been heavily driven by the extractive sector, which exhibits low labour-absorption capacity, rather than high-absorption sectors like manufacturing and agriculture, leaving the current national labor absorption rate lagging between 63.2% and 66.0%. On a continental scale, the April 2026 IM Regional Economic Outlook for Sub-Saharan Africa highlights that this gap between policy promises and operational reality is widened across the region due to low per capita growth and several structural infrastructure bottlenecks that choke private sector employment drive. This policy-to-reality gap is severely compounded by a widespread regional deficit in "budget credibility," where persistent deviations between approved budget plans and actual fiscal outcomes erode macroeconomic stability and undermine the policy commitments required to anchor long-term development.

As a result, policies that seek to address unemployment must do more than promise job creation; they must establish robust, labour-centric systems that expand productive capacity in a sustainable way that genuinely promotes and protect labour and ensure structured and proper implementation protocols.

The 24-Hour Economy and the Accelerated Export Programme is one of the most ambitious policy responses to this challenge. It is designed to stimulate output, increase export, and create additional demand for labour across selected sectors of the economy, such as manufacturing agro-processing, transports, logistics, retail, and services. The central issue, however, is not whether the policy sounds promising, but whether it can actually absorb labour at scale without creating new structural inefficiencies or fiscal sustainability problems.

The main argument of this assessment is that this policy addresses unemployment to a meaningful extent, but only conditionally. Its success depends on the ability for Ghana to sustain demand, manage labour rotation properly, increase and maintain reliable energy, protect workers, build institutional capacity required for shift based production, and ensure that expanded production lead to decent jobs rather than overwork or labour substitution. The 1:3:3 framework is therefore useful as an analytical approach for testing whether one productive job setup can truly cater for three labours and across three shifts in Ghana’s economic context.

To commence, we need to understand the underlying intentions of the policies.The 24-Hour Economy is built on the idea that Ghana can increase productivity if firms, institutions, and services operates around the clock, which is across multiple shifts throughout the day and night. Instead of limiting economic activity to one daily cycle, production facilities, transport systems, and service providers can make most usefulness out of their capital and human resources, to produce more, serve more people, and employ more labourers. In theory, this should expand employment because more shifts require more workers, more support services, and more logistical coordination. It also aim to stimulate secondary employment in security, transport, maintenance, catering, healthcare, and supply chains.

The Accelerated Export Development Programme also serves as an important complement to this idea by pushing Ghana toward a more value-added production and export-oriented economy. If domestic firms can produce more for local and foreign markets, then labour demand should increase across the entire value chain. The export and competitiveness strategy therefore strengthens the employment logic of the 24 hour economy. Together, both policies aim to make Ghana more productive, more competitive, and more capable of absorbing its growing labour force. 

The 1:3:3 framework now becomes the most useful way to evaluate the employment logic of the policy. It suggests that, instead of one worker operating one shift, the same production facility can generate more employment by rotating workers the full day and night. Therefore one productive unit can support three workers across three shifts. This concept is attractive because it implies that job creation can come not only from building new firms, but also from intensifying the use of existing, underutilized productive capacity. The statistical baseline for this framework would rely on the current national Labour Force Participation Rate of 74.5%; the gap between this active participation and the 63.2%-66.0% absorption rate proves there is an underutilized labor pool ready to fill additional shift slots if structural demand is unlocked. 

However, the framework must be treated critically. It is not enough to assume that three separate independent workers are going to be shared among one job across three shifts. The opposite can happen, and if that happens, then the policy may reduce employment rather than expand it. Therefore, this framework only works under highly specific social and economic conditions. For example, one worker cannot simply be stretched across three shifts without damaging productivity, health, and labour fairness. The system only becomes viable when each shift is staffed by separate workers, when productivity justifies the cost of additional labour, when labour regulation is enforced, and when the market can absorb the higher level of output. So the real world utility of the 1:3:3 framework is best used as a test of operational feasibility, not an automatic formula to cause a guaranteed outcome.

To move on, the policies address unemployment in several direct, indirect, and induced ways. First, they create direct employment by encouraging businesses in sectors that can function continuously to extend operating hours. Some of them include, manufacturing, retail, logistics, agro-processing, transport, health, hospitality, security, and selected services. These businesses can generate more jobs if they operate in multiple shifts. Second, they create  indirect jobs through supply chains, technical maintenance, delivery, packaging, and secondary support services. Third, they create induced employment, because more workers earning stable incomes will spent more in the economy, which stimulates demand in other sectors and parts of the economy. 

The export component is equally important. It strengthens this effect by linking employment to production for broader markets. By increasing production for external markets, the policy can strengthen labour demand in firms that would otherwise remain small or underutilized. If Ghana successfully increases the competitiveness, production, and exports of value-added goods, then firms will have a structural incentive to hire more labour across the production chain. This is important because unemployment is not only solved by government hiring, but by creating a productive economy in which private firms have real incentives to expand labour demand. In that sense, the policy has the potential to reduce unemployment. 

Nevertheless, that does not mean the policy will automatically reduce unemployment on a large scale. The extent of its impact is conditional. It depends on whether the economic environment can support continuous production. If firms cannot afford multiple shifts, if energy is too costly, if demand is weak, if proper labour regulations are not enforced, or if implementation is poor, then the employment effect will be limited, and the policy will only partially address unemployment. The 2024 Integrated Business Establishment Survey [IBES I] states that while the business ecosystem scaled significantly to 1.9 million establishments, it is heavily dominated by micro-sized, privately owned enterprises concentrated in the Services sector, making their operating margins highly sensitive to overhead and energy shocks. This structural vulnerability perfectly aligns with the IMF's departmental findings on Sub-Saharan Africa, which demonstrate that deep structural institutional weaknesses, rather than isolated forecasting errors, regularly derail ambitious economic plans.

To proceed, every policy has its own downtimes and risks, and there is no exemption with this one. There are several structural concerns that can cause the failure of this policy, and therefore needs to be critically examined. One of the strongest concerns is sustainability. Even if production rises and employment increases, the system may still become unstable if demand for goods and services does not grow alongside supply. If firms produce more but cannot sell enough, they cannot sustain the new jobs created. Similarly, if wages rise too quickly relative to productivity, business costs may become too high, reducing the ability of firms to maintain multiple shifts.

This means the policy must be judged not only by how many jobs it creates, but by whether those jobs are economically sustainable over time. The danger is that a 24-hour production model may look successful on paper while becoming financially unstable in practice. Because, a model as such is economically meaningful only if it generates enough market value to cover wages, energy, maintenance, and logistics. This is especially important in an economy like Ghana's, where many firms operate under tight margins and where demand conditions are not always stable. 

That is why the policy should be linked to market demand, industrial competitiveness, and productivity growth. The IMF departmental paper on budget credibility notes that a synchronized decline in foreign aid, overly optimistic assumptions about foreign grants, and an underestimation of public interest payments create late-year financing gaps. These mid-year adjustments spark procyclical current spending overruns, unexpected borrowing, and arrears accumulation, which severely disrupt macroeconomic predictability and compress the margins of private firms operating under tight demand conditions.

Another serious issue is labour substitution. If the same worker is made to cover multiple shifts or even chooses to be reused across shifts (due to income motivation and other informal factors), then the policy may reduce rather than expand total employment. That would completely defeat the main purpose of the 1:3:3 framework. Real job creation requires that shift work be properly organized so that one person does not simply work longer hours in place of three different people. Therefore it should mean proper rotation, fair. scheduling, and an organized labour system that distributes opportunities across more workers.

This raises questions of labour management, enforcement, and fairness. A true 24-hour economy must be based on meaningful rotation, staffing rules, rest periods, and labour protection. It cannot function by overworking a small number of employees while claiming to have created jobs. If it does, the policy will create fatigue, low productivity, and health problems, reducing the long-term benefits of the policy. Therefore it must ensure that workers are healthy, productive, and protected from exploitation. Otherwise, the policy may increase output on paper but reduce human welfare in practice.

The policy also raises an important question of energy management, both for firms and for workers. A 24-hour economy requires reliable electricity, transport, and infrastructure, but it also requires workers' physical and mental energy. Human beings cannot produce efficiently without rest, recovery, proper supervision, and safe working conditions. If the shift system is poorly managed, then fatigue, accidents, errors, and turnover will increase. For instance, if the same worker is pushed through too many shifts or is informally moved from one shift to another, then the policy becomes a labo exploitation model rather than a job creation model.

This is why the human capital dimension is so important. Job creation should not come at the expense of labour health, dignity, and capacity development. In other words, employment should not only increase in quantity; it should also improve capacity, dignity, health, and long-term productivity. The policy must therefore be designed in a way that develops labour rather than exhausting it; it must build productive people, not just extend working hours. In this sense, the quality of employment matters as much as the number of jobs.

For the policy to reduce unemployment meaningfully, several conditions must be met. First, Ghana must ensure reliable and affordable energy. Second, firms must have access to finance, technology, logistics support, and other infrastructure that make continuous production viable. Third, labour regulations must be strong enough to protect shift workers, prevent abuse, overwork, and improper shift stacking. Fourth, the economy must generate. enough marked demand, both locally and abroad, to justify expanded production. Fifth, the sectors targeted must be those with genuine capacity for shift-based job creation. The last but not the least is that coordination across institutions must be strong and consistent, as production chains are also concerned. 

If these conditions are not in place, the policy will have limited effect on unemployment. But if they are achieved, then the policy could become a major mechanism for labour absorption and structural transformation. Its success therefore lies in the ecosystem that supports productive and humane shift-based work.

Before we move to the conclusion, to what extent, then, does Ghana's 24-Hour Economy and Accelerated Export Development Programme address unemployment? The answer is that it addresses unemployment to a meaningful but conditional extent. It is a strong policy direction because it recognizes that Ghana cannot solve unemployment through static production systems alone without expanding productive employment, improving competitiveness, and deepening laboi absorption. 

By promoting continuous production and export-led growth it creates a framework for expanding labour demand. Spatial data from the 2024 IBES I report indicates that business infrastructure is hyper-concentrated within the Greater Accra and Ashanti regions, meaning the direct job creation effects of a 24-hour shift framework will heavily hit these areas first, while emerging northern hubs like the Tamale Metropolitan Area provide tactical corridors for rural export integration.

However, it is conditional because the actual effect on unemployment will depend on implementation quality, market conditions, energy stability, human capacity development, labour protection and proper regulation.

The 1:3:3 framework is a useful tool for evaluating this policy because it helps test whether the employment gains are real or merely theoretical. It forces us to ask whether one productive setup can truly support three workers across three shifts in a sustainable way. In some sectors, the answer may be yes, because there is proper coordination and sufficient market demand. In other sectors, the model may be too costly, too difficult to enforce and manage, too weak in generating real job expansion, or too labour-intensive. This means the policy is a promising framework, but not a guaranteed solution.

In conclusion, Ghana's 24-Hour Economy and Accelerated Export Development Programme should be seen as a potentially powerful labour-absorption strategy rather than a complete solution to unemployment. It can contribute to job creation through expanded production, export growth, and shift-based labour demand. However, its success depends on whether Ghana can convert these intentions into decent, sustainable, properly managed and fairly distributed employment. The 1:3:3 framework is a useful analytical lens because it exposes both the opportunities and the limits of the policy: not simply whether more hours are being worked, but whether more people are actually being employed in a productive and humane system. 

Ultimately, the policy will address unemployment effectively only if it is supported by strong institutions, reliable energy, adequate demand, fair labour management, and a genuine commitment to human capital development, to improve livelihoods and build sustainable national capacity.

Frederick Akuamoah 

Economist, HCD Architect, Global Development Activist.

Reference Notes 

Localized Context: Structural dynamics, business scales, and geographic data derived directly from the 2024 Ghana Statistical Service Integrated Business Survey (IBES I) and the 2025 Annual Household Income and Expenditure Survey (AHIES).

Continental Framework: Structural and private-sector limitations, and dynamics sourced directly from the April 2026 IMF Regional Economic Sub-Saharan Africa (Chapter 3: "Sub-Saharan Africa Growth Reset: Reforms to Unlock Private Sector Drive") and the IMF Departmental Paper on Budget Credibility in Sub-Saharan Africa (2026).