Dr. George Domfeh, a renowned academic and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Ghana, has issued a scathing critique of the shifting narratives surrounding Ghana’s economic performance.
In a pointed commentary on his Facebook page, he accused political actors and their “academic machinery” of intellectual dishonesty, specifically regarding how they attribute economic shocks and successes to global forces.
Dr. Domfeh’s concerns center on what he perceives as a “shameless” double standard, blaming the government for global crises when it is politically convenient, while using same global trends to claim credit for successes.
He pointed to the 2022 global economic turmoil, when crude oil prices surged to $121 per barrel, and argued that critics dismissed the role of global shocks when Ghana’s inflation peaked at 54% in December 2022.
“Both the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank described the 2022 global economic turmoil as the worst since the great depression,” he noted, “yet their conclusion remained the same that Akufo-Addo was ‘super incompetent.'”
Dr. Domfeh highlighted a pattern of inconsistency in how economic indicators are interpreted by political communicators.
He argued that when rising global gold prices allowed the Bank of Ghana to intervene in the forex market, critics ignored market forces and credited “fiscal consolidation” instead.
When global crude oil dropped, leading to lower pump prices, the drop was framed as a result of “sound economic management”.
The Senior Research Fellow questioned the selective use of global market conditions to explain economic outcomes, asking: “Since when did they get to know that global market dynamics can affect our economy? What do they take Ghanaians for, people with short memories?”
Dr. Domfeh concluded that while the current defense of the cocoa sector based on global trends is “true and reasonable,” consistency and respect for facts should prevent those who previously mocked the “global shock” explanation from using it now.
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