Yes, Ghana earns from imports and exports, with huge inflows especially from gold, but the real question is, does this actually sustain the cedi?
In reality, according to experts, it comes in and almost immediately finds its way back out again through imports, debt repayments, profit repatriation, and other external obligations. In that constant movement, the pressure never really settles.
What you begin to see is a currency that is always reacting, rising when inflows look strong, weakening when outflows take over, almost like it is caught in a motion it cannot control. The cedi ends up dancing up and down, not because there is no money coming in, but because the money does not stay long enough to build stability.
And that is where the deeper concern lies.
The structure itself has created what can be described as a leaky bucket economy with a never-ending rhythm, where foreign exchange flows in, but also flows out just as quickly, leaving the system in a constant cycle of adjustment rather than calm balance.
This is a picture that best captures the concern economist and CEO of Dalex Finance, Joe Jackson, raised during the 2026 Dean of Business School Lecture Series at the University of Professional Studies, Accra.
He described Ghana’s exchange rate story as one of volatility rather than simple decline, pointing to the repeated swings the cedi has experienced over time, including a sharp fall of nearly 71% between 2016 and 2024, followed by a rebound of about 40% between 2024 and 2025.
His argument, as reported by Joynews, is that Ghana is not necessarily struggling because it fails to earn foreign exchange. Rather, the challenge lies in what happens after those earnings enter the economy, and how quickly they are drained through structural outflows such as imports, debt servicing, profit repatriation, and capital flight.
In that sense, the cedi is not simply responding to market sentiment. It is moving within a system that is constantly feeding and draining itself at the same time.
But how does this “dance” stop?
In his argument, the solution is not one single policy fix, but a structural reset, one that reduces how quickly foreign exchange leaves the economy and increases how much value is retained locally.
That means building stronger domestic production systems so imports reduce over time, expanding local value addition especially in key export sectors like gold and cocoa, and tightening the channels through which foreign exchange leaks out of the economy.
At the same time, controlling inflation is critical. When inflation stays persistently high, it weakens confidence in the local currency, increases import dependence, and fuels demand for foreign currency, all of which feed back into pressure on the cedi.
So the direction of the solution is clear in principle: earn more value, retain more value, and lose less value from the system.
If those structural gaps are addressed, then the “leaky bucket” begins to close. And when the leaks reduce, the rhythm that keeps pushing the cedi up and down can gradually slow, not into perfection, but into something far more important: stability.
