Ghana’s economic upswing is due in no small part to the oil deposits discovered off the coast. In recent years, the country’s government has also introduced a series of business-friendly reforms. It wants to reduce Ghana’s dependence on raw materials such as gold, cocoa, tropical hardwoods and oil, and thus its exposure to the associated fluctuations in global commodity markets, by encouraging greater processing of these materials within the country.
The population as a whole has benefited from the country’s economic growth. The number of Ghanaians living below the poverty threshold as defined by the UN has halved since the 1990s. Since 2010, Ghana has been classed as a ‘lower-middle-income country’.