Amid the need for Ghana to rebuild trust between government officials and the state, CDD-Ghana Fellow and board member of Ecobank, Hene Aku Kwapong, is making a strong case for the state to open up its own pay structure for everyone to see.
Hene Aku Kwapong believes the country’s journey toward becoming a high-trust society must begin with radical transparency in how it manages its own remuneration for public officers.
The CDD-Ghana Fellow is not just making an abstract proposal; he is also showing how it can be done. He says the government can create a public, searchable state career website where every government role, ranging from the most junior position to the highest public office, is listed along with its job description, salary, and benefits.
He was quick to add that not the names of individual office holders, but the full architecture of public-sector compensation.
To him, this is not a complicated reform. The government already has all the data: the job classifications, allowances, benefit schedules, and grade structures. Nothing new has to be invented, and no international negotiations are required. It simply needs political will.
“The First Step Government MUST take is Radical Transparency in Public Finance Through a Public State Career Portal. If Ghana is serious about becoming a high-trust society, the first and most achievable reform is also the most obvious one,” he indicated.
He added, “The government must create a comprehensive, public, searchable state career website. On it should appear every role in the public service, every job description, and every Cedi of salary and benefits attached to the role. Not the names of individuals, but the structure of compensation. The entire public-sector pay architecture is made visible to its owners, the citizens.
Aku Kwapong argues that publishing these details would immediately shift the relationship between citizens and their government. Per his analysis, secrecy has become the default setting for how the state operates, leaving many Ghanaians unsure about who earns what, why certain allowances exist, and how pay structures are determined.
This, he says, feeds suspicion, weakens accountability, and widens the gap between leaders and the people they serve.
He points to high-trust societies such as Singapore, Canada, the United States, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, and the United Kingdom, where public-sector pay information is openly published online.
In these places, ordinary citizens know how much different public roles are worth, and governments have nothing to hide.
He further makes a strong case that Ghana has reached a point where transparency is no longer a luxury but a requirement for good governance. He believes that when a state willingly reveals what it already knows, it sends a strong message about its commitment to accountability.
“When a state chooses to reveal what it already knows, it signals to citizens that secrecy is no longer the default operating system,” he emphasized.
Such a reform is also expected to help settle long-standing frustrations around inequitable allowances, unexplained salary disparities, and accusations of hidden perks for politically connected individuals.
The CDD-Ghana Fellow maintains that a transparent system would show citizens the exact structure of public pay and reduce the rumours that often fill the information vacuum.
