Ghana cannot transform its economy while continuing to export raw materials without adding value, Executive Chairman of the McDan Group, Daniel McKorley, has said, urging a stronger national push toward industrialisation.
Speaking at the launch of the Ghana CEO Summit in Accra, he said the country must move beyond policy discussions and focus on execution.
“Firstly, industrialisation must move from policy to execution,” he said. “Ghana cannot continue to rely heavily on raw export like gold, salt, cocoa, oil, without significant value addition.”
His remarks reflect a broader concern about Ghana’s long-standing reliance on primary commodities, which continue to dominate the country’s export earnings.
Data shows that gold, crude oil and cocoa account for more than 80% of total export earnings, underscoring a highly concentrated external trade structure.
While this export mix has supported foreign exchange inflows, it also exposes the economy to global commodity price swings, where pricing is determined externally and transmitted directly into domestic conditions.
The concern raised by Mr. McKorley goes beyond export dependence to the structure of value creation itself.
Global commodity systems typically move through multiple stages, production, initial processing, refining, manufacturing, branding, and distribution, before reaching final markets where most of the value is realised.
Ghana’s participation remains heavily concentrated at the early stages of this chain, particularly in raw production and limited processing, while higher-value activities occur outside the domestic economy.
In cocoa, for example, industry estimates indicate that a large majority of beans, often over 70% are exported in raw form, with processing into chocolate, confectionery, and branded products largely taking place abroad. The result is that the most profitable segments of the chain are captured externally.
A similar structure applies across other raw material exports, where commodities are shipped out in basic form, transformed elsewhere, and reintroduced into global markets as higher-value finished goods priced outside local control.
Against this backdrop, Mr. McKorley argued that industrialisation must focus on more than production alone.
“We, as captains of industry, must think far. We must process what we produce and build industries that create jobs at large scale,” he said.
The argument points to a shift in focus, from exporting raw materials to expanding domestic participation in value-added stages of production.
Recent data suggests some movement in that direction. Ghana’s processed and semi-processed exports reached about $3.09 billion in 2025, reflecting gradual growth in domestic value addition.
However, this remains modest compared to the scale of raw commodity exports, which continue to dominate the country’s external trade profile.
The gap between raw export value and finished product value remains significant. In many global value chains, the highest margins are captured not in production, but in refining, manufacturing, branding, and distribution, segments that require capital, technology, and integration into established global systems.
This is where the structural challenge becomes more pronounced. Ghana produces the raw inputs, but much of the value created from them is realised elsewhere in the chain.
Industrialisation, therefore, is not only about processing what is produced, but about extending participation further along the value chain into the stages where pricing power and profitability are highest.
For Ghana, the shift being called for is not new. But the urgency lies in how long the economy can continue to grow while retaining only a fraction of the value embedded in what it produces.
