Ghana’s 24-Hour Economy agenda has reached an important project-development milestone with the signing of a Joint Project Preparation Facility (JPPF) Framework Agreement between the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), the Ghana Infrastructure Investment Fund (GIIF) and the 24-Hour Economy Authority.

The significance of the agreement goes beyond the signing ceremony. For a country seeking to transform ambitious economic priorities into productive assets, industrial capacity, export opportunities and sustainable employment, project preparation is where vision begins to acquire financial and commercial credibility.

The JPPF is designed to accelerate the preparation of selected priority projects under Ghana’s 24-Hour Economy and Accelerated Export Development Programme (24H+). The wider 24Hour investment pipeline is currently valued at approximately US$11.5 billion, while Afreximbank and GIIF will each make an initial US$5 million contribution to finance eligible technical, financial, legal and advisory work.

This distinction is important. The US$10 million initial commitment is not US$10 million of construction financing for the US$11.5 billion pipeline. Rather, it is project-preparation capital intended to address the technical, financial, legal, commercial and structuring issues that can prevent potentially transformative projects from becoming bankable. Projects will be selected through joint screening and approval.

From Vision to Bankability

In development finance, one of the most persistent obstacles to infrastructure and industrial investment is not necessarily the absence of capital. It is the absence of well-prepared, properly structured and investment-ready projects. A project may have strategic importance and strong political support, but that alone does not make it financeable.

Investors and lenders require answers to fundamental questions: What is the project’s commercial model? What are its projected cash flows? Who bears which risks? What are the legal and regulatory arrangements? What is the market demand? What is the environmental and social impact? What are the construction and operational risks? How will foreign-exchange exposure be managed? What guarantees, offtake arrangements or revenue mechanisms are required? The JPPF addresses this critical upstream stage.

Afreximbank brings project-development and capital-mobilisation expertise; GIIF contributes local project origination and infrastructure-investment capabilities; while the 24-Hour Economy Authority is responsible for bringing forward strategic projects and coordinating relevant government stakeholders. The three institutions will jointly screen and prioritise projects for support. That institutional architecture matters. It creates a framework in which policy priorities, project development and investment expertise can converge before projects reach the market for financing.

The Real Test Is Project Delivery

For Ghana, however, the ultimate measure of success will not be the number of projects identified, feasibility studies completed or agreements signed. The real test will be whether projects move successfully through the project lifecycle—from concept, feasibility and structuring to financing, procurement, construction, commissioning and operations. This is where project governance becomes indispensable.

The country has no shortage of development ambitions. What Ghana needs is a stronger and more systematic capacity to convert those ambitions into projects that can withstand technical, financial, commercial, legal and institutional scrutiny. The JPPF therefore represents an opportunity to strengthen the project-development pipeline before billions of dollars of capital are committed. As Presidential Adviser on the 24-Hour Economy and Accelerated Export Development, Augustus Obuadum Tanoh, noted, the programme is delivered through transformational projects and projects must be properly prepared to attract capital. That principle should become central to Ghana’s infrastructure and development-finance culture.

Building a Bankable Project Pipeline

The sectors targeted by the facility demonstrate the breadth of Ghana’s economic ambitions. They include energy and infrastructure; logistics and digital connectivity; industrial parks; manufacturing and agro-processing; minerals beneficiation; tourism; creative industries; and healthcare. These are not isolated investments. Properly integrated, they can form interconnected economic corridors and productive value chains:

• Energy supports manufacturing.
• Infrastructure connects production centres to markets.
• Logistics reduces the cost of moving goods.
• Digital connectivity enables modern commerce and industrial management.
• Industrial parks provide platforms for production.
• Agro-processing creates value beyond primary agricultural production.
• Minerals beneficiation can move Ghana higher up global value chains.
• Tourism and the creative economy diversify sources of foreign exchange.
• Healthcare contributes to human capital and economic resilience.

The project-delivery challenge, therefore, is to ensure that these investments are developed not as disconnected projects but as commercially coherent components of a national economic system.

GIIF’s Institutional Opportunity

One of the particularly significant aspects of the JPPF is that its benefits extend beyond individual projects. The arrangement includes training, knowledge transfer, capacity building and staff secondments designed to strengthen GIIF’s internal project-preparation capabilities. This is strategically important.

A country cannot sustainably depend on external advisers to prepare every major infrastructure transaction. Ghana needs institutions capable of originating, screening, appraising, structuring, negotiating and monitoring complex projects over the long term.

The capacity-building component can therefore help deepen GIIF’s institutional capabilities and contribute to the development of a stronger national project-preparation ecosystem.

GIIF Chief Executive Officer Nana Dwemoh Benneh has described the partnership as strengthening the Fund’s ability to move priority projects from concept to investment readiness, while giving its professionals access to Afreximbank’s project-preparation expertise. That institutional knowledge transfer may ultimately prove as valuable as the initial preparation funding.

From Preparation to Investment

Project preparation must not become an end in itself. Ghana must establish clear gateways through which projects progress from preparation to investment decision and then to implementation.

A robust project pipeline should distinguish between projects that are strategically desirable, projects that are technically feasible, projects that are financially viable and projects that are genuinely bankable and investment-ready. This requires disciplined project appraisal, realistic cost estimates, credible demand assessments, transparent procurement arrangements, appropriate risk allocation and strong governance. It also requires clarity on the source of the eventual construction and long-term financing.

The JPPF can prepare projects for financing, but each project will still require its own capital structure and investment case. The preparation facility should therefore be viewed as an upstream catalyst for much larger pools of public, private and institutional capital. This is where the partnership with Afreximbank becomes particularly relevant.

Afreximbank’s continental trade and capital-mobilisation mandate can help connect Ghanaian projects with a broader African investment and trade-finance ecosystem. The objective should be to ensure that projects emerging from the facility are capable of attracting financing beyond the initial preparation phase.

Infrastructure Must Deliver Economic Value

For Ghana’s project-delivery community, the central question should always be simple: What economic value will the completed project create, and how sustainably will that value be delivered? Infrastructure should not be measured only by the amount spent or the physical asset constructed.

• The stronger measure is what the asset enables.
• Does a logistics project reduce transportation costs?
• Does an industrial park attract productive investment?
• Does an energy project improve reliability and industrial competitiveness?
• Does an agro-processing facility create value for farmers and expand exports?
• Does digital infrastructure improve business productivity?
• Does a healthcare investment strengthen access and service delivery?

These questions place project delivery within the wider framework of economic transformation.

A New Standard for Project Preparation

The Afreximbank, GIIF and 24Hour Economy Authority partnership also has the potential to establish a higher standard for how Ghana prepares major national projects. Every major project should have a clearly defined business case, economic rationale, financing strategy, implementation structure, risk framework, procurement plan, governance model and measurable outcomes before significant capital is committed. This is particularly important as Ghana seeks to attract private capital without placing excessive pressure on the sovereign balance sheet.

The 2026 Budget itself envisaged leveraging the 24-Hour Economy allocation with GIIF, the Development Bank Ghana and private capital, with the objective of keeping financing largely off the sovereign balance sheet. That approach places even greater responsibility on project sponsors and financiers to ensure that projects are commercially credible and properly structured.

The Opportunity Before Ghana

The JPPF comes at a time when Ghana is seeking to move from economic stabilisation towards accelerated production, investment and export growth. The opportunity is significant, but so is the responsibility. The US$11.5 billion 24H+ pipeline should not simply be viewed as a large number. It should be treated as a portfolio that must earn investor confidence project by project.

The immediate task is therefore to identify projects with strong economic and commercial fundamentals, prepare them rigorously, structure appropriate financing arrangements and move them efficiently through the investment and implementation cycle.

If that discipline is maintained, the JPPF can become more than a project-preparation mechanism. It can become an important institutional bridge between Ghana’s development priorities and the capital required to deliver them. For Ghana’s project-management, infrastructure and development-finance professionals, this is the moment to focus on execution.

The country does not need another generation of projects that remain trapped between policy announcements and implementation. It needs projects that are properly conceived, rigorously appraised, professionally structured, responsibly financed and successfully delivered. The Afreximbank, GIIF and 24Hour Economy Authority pact is an important step in that direction.

The real measure of progress, however, will ultimately be what Ghana builds, what those assets produce, how efficiently they operate, and the jobs, exports, businesses and economic opportunities they create.

That is where the promise of the 24-Hour Economy must finally become measurable project-delivery reality.