Amid the conversations around Ghana’s best route to total economic transformation and industrial growth, a CDD-Ghana Fellow believes that one critical challenge is the struggle to build strong homegrown businesses.
To him, the situation is not simply because of weak policies or a lack of capital, but the deeper problem of a national culture of mistrust.
The CDD-Ghana Fellow and the former Senior Vice President of New York City Economic Development Corporation, Dr. Hene Aku Kwapong, says this is a painful history that has conditioned Ghanaians to see local business success as suspicious rather than commendable.
In an article that seeks to address the issue, this mistrust, he argues, did not appear by accident. It was “manufactured” through decades of political instability, opaque governance, and the repeated destruction of domestic wealth. Over time, he observes that Ghanaians have internalised the belief that any successful local company must be corrupt, politically protected, or exploiting the system.
And whenever the government partners with a local business, the public often assumes the worst. The consequence, he says, is devastating as the very businesses Ghana needs to industrialize are the same ones society is conditioned to tear down.
South Korea’s Story: How a Poor Nation Built Giants by Supporting Its Own
Dr. Aku Kwapong contrasts Ghana’s experience with that of South Korea. He recounts a nation that, in 1960, was poorer, less industrialised, and more devastated by war. The prospects of Ghana, then, he notes, were brighter and positive than South Korea.
Yet, within one generation, Korea built global giants such as Samsung, Hyundai, LG, SK, Lotte, and Hanjin.
These firms did not emerge from ideal market conditions. They began as small trading shops, repair centres, cosmetics producers, and textile dealers. These are the same kind of modest enterprises Ghana had in the Gold Coast era.
With these small businesses, Dr. Kwapong indicates that South Korea made a bold choice to trust and support its own people. It backed that trust with deliberate, state-engineered support.
He narrates that under Park Chung Hee, Korea handpicked local businesses and pushed them, sometimes forcefully, into new industries. From subsidised loans to foreign-exchange access, from protective tariffs to massive state contracts, the government intentionally nurtured a national capitalist class.
To him, what South Korea built was not accidental. It was an intentional industrialization by design.
Ghana’s Reality: Suspicion, Outrage, and the Backlash That Stifles Growth
But in a contrasting development, Ghana, according to Dr. Kwapong, took the opposite path. Over the years, the country has nurtured the culture of politicising, criminalizing, and repeatedly destroying what he describes as domestic wealth.
He adds that the public has internalised the belief that success at home is suspicious unless validated abroad or has a partner abroad, such that businesses seek protection by inoculating themselves with foreign partners.
“This mistrust did not fall from the sky. It was manufactured, slowly and painfully, by a century of institutional traumas that taught Ghanaians to assume that every successful indigenous firm must be corrupt, politically protected, or predatory. And that any state support to such a firm must be a theft from the public purse,” he narrated.
Citing an example to buttress his case, he recounted that when local entrepreneur Joseph Siaw Agyepong’s Jospong Group was tasked with clearing abandoned vehicles, a routine urban management task, public outrage erupted almost immediately. Instead of asking whether the work needed to be done or whether the firm could do it, the dominant question was: “Who is benefiting behind the scenes?”
This, he says, is not about Jospong. It is about a society conditioned to distrust its own private sector because history has repeatedly shown corruption, political favouritism, and abuse of public contracts.
The effect of this situation is that Ghana punishes the very businesses it needs to grow, discourages ambition, and makes it nearly impossible for domestic companies to scale. To this end, he says, when suspicion becomes a culture, no local business survives long enough to become a national champion.
The South Korea–Ghana Contrast: The Tale of Two Different Choices and Outcomes
He notes that South Korea chose national support for its businesses, even imperfect ones, but Ghana chose national suspicion, even toward competent firms.
South Korea intentionally built industrial giants, but Ghana repeatedly dismantles promising local enterprises through public mistrust, political backlash, and institutional inconsistency.
South Korea’s decision birthed global champions, but Ghana’s decision has left it dependent on foreign companies for jobs, manufacturing, and major economic transformation.
Ghana’s Builders Exist — but Public Distrust Holds Them Back
In his view, Ghana stands the chance of taking South Korea’s path to economic transformation and industrialization. Dr. Kwapong lists several Ghanaian entrepreneurs, such as Ibrahim Mahama, Daniel McKorley, Ernest Ofori Sarpong, Akuamua Boateng, Osei Kwame Despite, Joseph Siaw Agyepong, Edmund Poku, and Mike Thakwani, describing them as Ghana’s “surviving capitalist class prototypes.”
Even with them, he admits that they are not universally loved, and some are indeed controversial. Others, he says, inspire some level of suspicion. But he says, “They are the pieces of the chessboard Ghana actually possesses.”
To him, these are the few individuals who have built and scaled businesses in a remarkably difficult economic terrain. They have survived where many others collapsed. And they are, by experience and capacity, the closest Ghana has to local giants capable of driving industrialization.
Breaking the Cycle
Dr. Kwapong argues that cannot Ghana cannot industrialise without building on the foundations laid by these local entrepreneurs. He adds that it cannot move forward by hoping for a perfect set of entrepreneurs.
He says it must work with the ones it has, just as every successful nation did. The mistrust of local businesses, he warns, is not only slowing Ghana’s development; it is actively sabotaging it.
Until the country learns to support, supervise, and partner with its own private sector, rather than suspecting it, Ghana will continue to stall where others have advanced.
