With commodity markets driving the country's remarkable turnaround, President John Mahama says political reforms, debt restructuring and revitalising farming will keep the cedi rising.

On the face of it, the barrage of upbeat reports on Ghana from the ratings agencies and the financial press point to a remarkable turnaround for a country that defaulted on its public debt three years ago.

'World-beating cedi slows Ghana inflation to a three-year low', 'Fitch raises Ghana to B-, closer to investment grade' and 'Ghana debt burden falls sharply on economic expansion - three years ahead of IMF target' ran the headlines.

But beyond that cheering news for Ghana is the reality that commodity markets are driving much of this change in sentiment.

Ghana's gold exports rose 76% to $5.2bn in the first quarter of 2025 compared to a year ago, and cocoa shipments tripled to $1.8bn between January and March this year.

That fuelled a 'virtuous circle' of commercial rethinking in Ghana. The ascent of the cedi - rising 43% against the US dollar - is also helped by external factors such as the generalised weakening, deliberate or otherwise, of the US currency since Donald Trump returned to the White House.

This has real-life consequences for Ghanaians. Their incomes go further - mobile-money transactions in Ghana hit $365bn ($35bn) in April, compared to $203bn a year ago.

Just as the vagaries of the commodity markets and the soaring cost of capital worked against John Mahama when he was running for a second term in 2016, these positive market shifts have eased his return to the presidency after he won the elections in December 2024. This time, Mahama tries hard to discourage complacency.

Some of this is politics, with blame being directed at the previous government. In March, finance minister Cassiel Ato Forson announced one of Ghana's toughest budgets, talking about the need for the shock therapy of hefty spending cuts. "The state of the economy as I have just presented, does not reflect an economy that has turned the corner ... it reflects an economy in severe distress, burdened by debt repayment humps, mismanagement and a lack of accountability," he said in his budget speech.

Those concerns were less to the fore when President Mahama welcomed The Africa Report to Flagstaff House in May after Ghana's latest rating upgrade - this time by S&P Global - had just landed. Was Mahama troubled by the sense that the gold and cocoa boom rescuing Ghana's economic standing was a reversion to the colonial extractive economy that founding president Kwame Nkrumah had railed against? Was it back to the Gold Coast past?

Not at all, says Mahama. "When the world becomes a bit unpredictable, people head to gold." With Ghana returning to its position as Africa's biggest gold exporter, its revenues should balloon.

"If you are a good surfer and a good wave comes, you ride it. We must use [this good wave] to build up our buffers so that in times of crises, our economy is more resilient. So that's the focus."

The bigger question is whether Ghanaians will benefit from this gold boom. When researchers from Swissaid asked a senior official at the Minerals Commission in Accra to comment on their findings that some 220 tonnes - worth around $11.4bn - of Ghana's gold had been smuggled to the United Arab Emirates, the response was: "It's a notorious fact."

Sitting down to speak with us, the leader is confident about his country's positive trajectory.

I think the economy is responding quite well to the measures we've put in place. That is reflected in the better numbers that we are seeing. After we took over [the presidency] on 7 January, there was a lot of catching up to do. The first budget contained quite strict measures - to cut down waste, reduce expenditure severely and achieve a positive primary balance. You know, the primary balance [the difference between government revenues and expenditures] is the key indicator that the IMF uses.

We passed the Public Financial Management Act and included the fiscal responsibility in it.

We amended the Public Procurement Act to make sure that ministers are not committing the government [to spending without] commencement certificates from the ministry of finance. We also adjusted electricity tariffs, and all those things were noticed by the market, and that's what positively impacted the credit rating.

The debt exchange has stretched out and given Ghana some breathing room. We have done about 93% of the debt negotiations, and so we've done the bilateral, we've done the Eurobond and others. That just leaves the commercial creditors and that's just about 7% of the debts. It accounts for a little over $2bn of our total debt, and it also contributes to bringing the debt-to-GDP ratio down.

But more recently, it was the improved performance of the cedi that also resulted in a reduction in our debt to GDP because our total public debt is calculated in cedi.

You criticised the IMF programme under the previous government. Are you going to see this IMF programme through to the completion?

We are committed to finishing the programme, there's no question about that. We will continue with it until next April. We'll meet all the IMF benchmarks. Fiscal discipline is necessary for us to create a more resilient economy.

You must create conditions for it to happen naturally. You can't force it by going to build a factory in every district [as the previous government tried]. We're doing a survey of all the one district-one factory projects [undertaken by the previous government] and I wouldn't be surprised if 70% of them are non­functional. There are many where there is a building but no machinery in it. They did not take into consideration the full value chain, the availability of raw materials, etc.

The whole concept around it was wrong. We are looking at the value chain and the government is not going to be the one building the factory. We're going to facilitate the private sector to go ahead and put in the factories. We're going to go from the political planting of factories just for populist reasons and electoral advantage to creating real processing zones where the raw materials are guaranteed, the factory is in place and the market is available.

There has got to be an economic, commercial logic to it - not a political plan. There has to be a market and the demand for it to work. If you consider Ghana's 33 million people - on food imports alone, we spend anything between $2.7bn and $3bn. These are all items that we can produce here, like rice, vegetables, cooking oil. We're spending over $200m a year importing palm oil from Malaysia and Indonesia.

We have processing plants here that are importing raw palm oil from Malaysia. Our aim with the 24-hour policy is to plant 200,000 hectares of oil palm. We will serve our local market first and for any excess - there's a big market for oil palm in Nigeria. These high-value crops that are important for industrial purposes will support the 24-hour economy.

What is your plan for a Volta Lake economic zone?

The Volta Lake is one of the biggest assets, billions of cubic feet of water that flow into the Atlantic Ocean. By creating an industrial zone around the lake, we can increase the production of all kinds of crops for export, processing and local consumption.

We can also use the lake as a transport corridor to bring the goods down to Akosombo. We've already built a rail line from Akosombo to Tema Harbour, so those who set up export processing factories along the lake can put containers on the water and take them onto the train straight to Tema.

We want to encourage more exporters in the middle part of the country. It will balance Ghana's development geographically.

We're going to start the feasibility studies. We're looking at a city that is up in the Accra Plains close to the Volta River. It will straddle the Eastern and Volta regions, and then we will move some of the government ministry agencies and financial institutions out there.

Our constitution was adopted in 1992 and much has changed since then.

After I won the elections last year, I was presented with two committee reports on constitutional reform: one from Professor John Atta Mills, of blessed memory, and the one from Nana Addo Akufo-Addo. So, I said let us start with a single report that we can all buy into.

Well, I'm doing my last term, but a lot of responsibility is put on the president, who is held responsible for everything that happens in the lives of Ghanaians.

If you reduce presidential powers, then you must reduce the blame. I have faith in the committee that was set up. We expect that they will present the final report in August.

Every arm of government has its processes that in extreme cases can be triggered - to remove the president, impeach the speaker or the chief justice.

The constitution says clearly that the president shall, upon receipt of petitions against the chief justice, consult the Council of State to set up a committee to investigate the matter.

If a prima facie case is established, then the president may suspend the chief justice while the committee is sitting. Several injunctions were filed against me as president. You can't have a chief justice empanelling judges to rule on injunctions that seek to restrain the committee that is investigating that same chief justice. The chief justice has her lawyers, and the petitioners are going with their lawyers. It will be a process that gives her a fair hearing.

One of the first things I did as a president was to visit the three (Sahelian) countries and to find out in what ways we can collaborate in the fight against terrorism.

My visit was well-received but the governments were unhappy about how they have been treated under the ECOWAS [Economic Community of West African States] sanctions: The closure of borders, cutting of power supply, letters of credit for imports of petroleum that were deliberately sabotaged in the BCEAO (Central Bank of West African States). What came out clearly was that a certain mistrust has developed between the leaders of the AoSS [Alliance of Sahel States] and ECOWAS.

Let's create a rapprochement between ECOWAS and the AoSS so that we can collaborate on economic integration, exchange of goods, free movement of people within our borders and sharing of intelligence in the fight against terrorism.

That should come first, instead of the push on them to transition to civil rule. The more you push them and say you must hand over to civilians, the more it gets pushed back.

Between Ghana and Lome, Togo, we have a joint border-crossing post. We're not sitting and doing nothing. When I was president before, we signed the MoU for the Abidjan corridor, an expressway. It has reached the financing stage.

The African Development Bank has been leading it in terms of raising the funding. The intention is that it will run from Lagos through Benin, Togo, Ghana to Abidjan in Cote d'lvoire. The second phase will run from Abidjan all the way to Dakar. The first phase should start next year. On that expressway, there will be joint border crossings. Once you clear customs there will be no obstructions along the way.

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