The Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition (GACC) has raised concerns over weak transparency, limited citizen participation, and accountability gaps in the implementation of petroleum revenue-funded projects across the country.

The concerns emerged at a national multi-stakeholder forum held on the project "From Disclosure to Impact – Mobilising Local Civil Society to Verify Published Extractives Data and Advocate for Equitable, Accountable Spend of Funds,” implemented by the GACC with support from the Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP).

The initiative monitored 35 projects between 2022 and 2025, funded through the Annual Budget Funding Amount (ABFA) across selected districts in the Ashanti, Northern, Volta, and Western regions.

Findings

The Programme Officer at the GACC, Samuel Harrison-Cudjoe, said findings from the three-year exercise revealed a persistent “lack of citizen participation in project planning,” explaining that most projects were conceived in Accra and imposed on local communities.

“People living within the districts don’t have any say… There is no local involvement in the planning and even the implementation of the projects,” he told journalists at the forum held last Thursday.

He further cited opacity in contracting processes, weak oversight by district assemblies, and widespread information gaps.

According to him, assemblies often lacked access to contract documents, making it difficult to monitor contractors or enforce accountability.

“There were some projects that even though we have them on paper… "You go to the ground, you can’t find the project,” he noted, attributing the situation to information asymmetry that creates opportunities for corruption.

Big Push

Mr Harrison-Cudjoe said the challenges, if not addressed, could be replicated under the government's flagship "Big Push" infrastructure agenda, expected to be financed through oil funds and mineral royalties.

"If we do not resolve these problems, then the Big Push is going to suffer the same fate... and it's our own oil money that we are throwing away without having any proper project that we can point to," he said.

Evidence

At the subnational level, members of the Local Accountability Networks (LANets) provided evidence of these gaps.

In the Ashanti Region, a LANet member in the Ashanti-Akyem Municipality, Philip Duah, described several ABFA-funded projects as “parachute projects,” imposed on communities without consultation or adequate information.

He cited a road project from Konongo to Kumasi and a streetlight installation at the Kumasi-Suame Interchange, both of which could not be verified on the ground.