Ghana’s recent drop to single-digit inflation has been hailed as a major macroeconomic success, but public policy think tank, IMANI Africa is revealing that the story beneath the surface is less desirable.
Amid the celebrations and the accolades, IMANI says, behind Ghana’s single-digit inflation is a far less celebratory and dangerously uneven distribution.
In its latest Criticality Analysis on inflation trends, IMANI warns that while the headline figure of 9.4% appears impressive, given its increase from over 23% at the beginning of the year, millions of Ghanaians, particularly in the northern and inland regions, continue to face severe price pressures that exceed the national average.
The analysis, cited by The High Street Journal, argued that in September 2025, the North East Region recorded inflation of 20.1%, while Bono East stood at just 1.2%. This means that households in the North East Region are experiencing a cost-of-living surge nearly 16 times faster than those in Bono East.
Even earlier in the year, when national inflation had fallen to 18.4%, Upper West was still grappling with a staggering 38.1%, highlighting that the benefits of disinflation have not been evenly shared.
IMANI’s analysis attributes these disparities to structural weaknesses that make inflation in Ghana increasingly uneven rather than uniform. The think tank enumerates that poor infrastructure, weak supply chains, and high transport costs continue to isolate many communities from the effects of national stabilization policies.
“These disparities reveal a deeper structural challenge: inflation in Ghana is increasingly regionalized, not uniform. The same national policies that have stabilized prices in Accra or Kumasi have had much weaker effects in the northern and inland regions, places where food inflation, logistics costs, and supply bottlenecks dominate local price dynamics,” IMANI indicated.
For households in Upper East, Upper West, and Savanna Regions, the macroeconomic victory feels distant. Prices of basic food items remain high, transport fares are volatile, and incomes are stagnant, leaving many families unable to feel the so-called “inflation relief” being trumpeted in Accra.
Analysts and development partners such as the World Bank and the IMF have indicated that uneven progress poses a serious threat to inclusive recovery and social stability.
The situation, therefore, calls for a targeted approach to inflation control that goes beyond fiscal and monetary tools, emphasizing infrastructure investment, regional logistics hubs, and support for local food storage and processing facilities.
IMANI stresses that the government should not be fixated on the national inflation but must also prioritize how every region benefits from the national policies aimed at taming prices.
