The claim that the proposed Accra-Kumasi Expressway could create 30,000 jobs may sound ambitious, but economist and political risk analyst Dr. Theo Acheampong says the figure is not only achievable, but it could even be conservative.
The economist explains that the employment impact should not be measured simply by counting people physically working on the road. It must also include the jobs generated across the wider supply chain, from quarries and cement producers to haulage companies, caterers and other service providers.
He says that infrastructure employment is normally measured in job-years, whether one person is employed full-time for 12 months. Someone employed for six months represents half a job-year.
Using this approach, Dr. Acheampong estimates that between US$400 million and US$500 million of a project of this scale could go towards on-site labour, including labourers, plant operators, artisans, engineers and supervisors.
At an estimated average employment cost of about US$10,000 per worker per year, that translates into roughly 38,000 direct job-years at the lower end of his calculation.
However, he was quick to add that the jobs do not stop at the construction site. Every truck transporting aggregates, every quarry supplying materials, every bag of locally produced cement and every catering or logistics contract creates additional economic activity.
Dr. Acheampong estimates that domestic purchases of between US$1.2 billion and US$1.5 billion could support another 12,000 to 14,000 indirect job-years across quarrying, cement, haulage and services.
Put together, his calculations point to approximately 50,000 job-years, with a plausible range of between 38,000 and 70,000, depending on wages, labour intensity and how much of the project is sourced locally.
This means that the government’s 30,000-job projection is not necessarily inflated. In fact, Dr. Acheampong argues that “30,000 is not an exaggeration: it is the floor.”
This is also an indication that if the expressway takes about 30 months to construct, the job-year figures do not mean 50,000 people will simultaneously stand on the roadside building the highway. Rather, they represent employment generated over the life of the project.
Dr. Acheampong estimates that about 20,000 people could be employed at any given time, while more than 50,000 individuals could potentially earn income from the project before the road is completed as workers rotate through different construction activities.
The employment impact, he says, could become even larger if Ghanaian companies capture more of the project spending. His estimate suggests that every additional 10 percentage points of project expenditure shifted from imports to Ghanaian suppliers could generate roughly 4,000 additional job-years.
This potential benefit, he says, makes local content of the project critical. For the employment promise to translate into measurable Ghanaian jobs, Dr. Acheampong recommends local labour and sourcing requirements in construction contracts, apprenticeship opportunities linked to TVET institutions, and payroll-based reporting to independently verify the number of direct jobs created.
More importantly, he argues that the road’s economic benefits should not end when construction does. The logistics hubs, industrial parks, businesses and expanded market access that the corridor could unlock would generate a second wave of employment, one that could potentially last far beyond the construction period.
