What exactly is the 24-Hour Economy? Here is what you need to know | Discuss Ghana

The debate surrounding the government's flagship 24-Hour Economy and Accelerated Export Development Programme (branded 24H+) is dominating headlines following the Ghanaian-German Economic Association (GGEA) "Meet the Government" series in Accra.

With Parliament officially adopting the joint committee's report on the program on Tuesday, July 14, 2026, the initiative is transitioning from a bold policy concept into an active national roadmap. However, many Ghanaians are still trying to understand what this policy actually means for their daily lives, their jobs, and their businesses.

1. Is it only about working at night?

No, it is not just about forcing people to work late. While the program encourages night shifts, the 24-Hour Economy is a comprehensive national strategy to maximize productivity across three full, eight-hour shifts model: one job, three people, three shifts).

Instead of a business operating from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM and locking its doors for the remaining 15 hours of the day, the government is incentivizing companies to run continuous, round-the-clock cycles. This means public services, ports, manufacturing plants, and agricultural hubs will operate 24/7, creating continuous production, faster administrative services, and constant economic movement.

2. What problem is it trying to solve?

The program was designed to target three critical structural issues currently dragging down Ghana's economy:

The Youth Unemployment Crisis: With youth unemployment hovering around 32%, the current job market cannot absorb the thousands of graduates finishing school each year. By moving businesses from one shift to three shifts, companies will naturally need to hire more shifts of workers to keep their doors open, directly creating a projected 1.7 million jobs within four years.

High Import Dependency: Ghana spends billions of foreign currency annually on basic goods like pharmaceuticals, processed foods, and construction materials. Running factories around the clock is designed to rapidly scale up local manufacturing, allowing Ghana to produce its own goods and protect the value of the Cedi.

Underutilized Infrastructure: Massive public investments—like ports, roads, and digital registries—often sit completely idle for over half the day. The program aims to optimize these public assets to ensure the country is constantly generating wealth.

3. Why does Ghana need it?

To transition from a raw material exporter to an industrial power, the country requires a structured framework that supports the private sector. During the GGEA series, Mr. Abdul-Nasser Alidu, the Chief Programme Officer of the 24-Hour Secretariat, explained how the state plans to make this transition viable for local companies:

It is Private Sector-Led: The government is not directly running these factories. Instead, the newly established 24-Hour Economy Authority (funded with a start-up budget of GH¢110 million) will act as a coordinating engine to help private businesses scale up.

Access to Land and Funding: The Secretariat has already secured 600 hectares of land for industrial investors and is setting up a credit guarantee scheme to help local businesses secure long-term loans without needing heavy physical collateral.

Lowering Production Costs: High electricity tariffs are the biggest hurdle for local factories. To solve this, the Secretariat highlighted major energy projects under development—including a 1.5-gigawatt solar project at Buipe—which aims to slash industrial power costs from 23 US cents to just 9 US cents per kilowatt-hour by 2027.