By 
How the 24-Hour Economy and Accelerated Export Development Programme became a national industrial strategy built on value chains, parks, and corridors
Ghana’s flagship economic transformation agenda has a name that no longer quite captures its ambition. The 24-Hour Economy and Accelerated Export Development Programme, known as 24H+, began life as a proposition about extending operating hours. It has become a national industrial strategy built around integrated value chains, a network of industrial and agroecological parks, and a decisive shift from exporting raw commodities to exporting finished goods.
GHANA IS NO LONGER SELLING A CONCEPT. IT IS SELLING PROJECTS.
The problem it addresses is structural. Ghana’s export earnings have long been dominated by unprocessed gold, cocoa, and crude oil, exposing national income to price cycles set elsewhere and surrendering the value added further along the chain. Alongside that sit fragmented value chains, weak logistics, and widespread under-employment among the young. The programme runs across eight strands covering agriculture, manufacturing, infrastructure, logistics, the creative economy, finance, skills, and civic engagement. The manufacturing strand of the programme alone envisages fifty modern industrial parks over ten years, concentrated on agroprocessing, pharmaceuticals, textiles and garments, and machinery and fabrication.
Statutory footing arrived in February 2026, when parliament passed the 24-Hour Economy Authority Bill and presidential assent followed, establishing a permanent authority in place of an advisory secretariat. The reasoning was about investment horizons: industrial parks and agroprocessing facilities cannot credibly be planned around four-year political cycles, and investors require assurance that a programme will outlast the government that launched it.
THE VOLTA ECONOMIC CORRIDOR
The centrepiece is the Volta Economic Corridor, conceived as Ghana’s first net-zero economic corridor. It links production zones from Tema through Akosombo and the Afram Plains to Tamale, integrating agriculture, industry, transport, and renewable energy along the spine of the Volta Lake, and is designed to draw more than two million hectares of arable land into agroecological parks connected to industrial parks and multimodal logistics. For landlocked neighbours it offers a lower-cost route to the sea. For investors it aggregates land, power, logistics, and demand into a single planned proposition.
The structure is taking shape. In July 2025 the African Development Bank signed a Letter of Intent to support the corridor, built around three special purpose vehicles covering inland water transport and ports, agroecological parks and irrigation, and lakeside industrial and logistics zones. In August 2026 the Volta River Authority, the 24H+ Secretariat, and the Ghana Infrastructure Investment Fund opened negotiations on a Master Concession Agreement, the point at which policy plans become an investment-ready structure.
THE VOLTA ECONOMIC CORRIDOR, GHANA’S FIRST NET-ZERO CORRIDOR, AGGREGATES LAND, POWER, LOGISTICS, AND DEMAND INTO A SINGLE PLANNED PROPOSITION.
The incentive framework is concrete: tax rebates, import duty waivers, value-chain lending facilities, performance-based export support, and time-of-use electricity tariffs that lower costs for extended operation. Under the Participatory Land Access Model, host communities lease land voluntarily in exchange for annual rental payments and equity stakes, giving them a direct financial interest in what is built.
What distinguishes 24H+ from the long history of industrial policy declarations is the sequencing. Government is undertaking feasibility studies, securing land, and aggregating demand before approaching investors, rather than announcing intentions and hoping capital follows. Execution risk remains real, particularly around power reliability and the pace of delivery. But Ghana is no longer selling a concept. It is selling projects. ■TG
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