For three decades now, the 4th Republic of Ghana has skirted economic disaster due to weak fiscal controls and poor public financial management (PFM). Even more harrowing to note is that the collapse of each of the previous republics was preceded by an economic crisis. It is as clear as noonday that Ghana’s failure to curb its addiction to skating on the brink is tantamount to PLAYING WITH HELL FIRE.
To be honest, though, the country has not been short of theatrics, earnest proclamations, and acronyms in the seeming quest to redress the perennial public financial management mess. From PAMSCAD to PURFMAP and from BPEMS to GIFMIS, Ghana can count itself as a contender in any contests of chefs when it comes to cooking new schemes with fancy acronyms to tame the monster. Someone quipped recently that the only acronym we have yet to try is BOFROT.
Looking carefully at all these earnest attempts, however, it is clear that each effort places all our trust in bureaucratic efficiency. With every PFM endeavour, we have advertised our intention to use tougher and tougher controls and restraints to prevent abuse of the public purse. Yet, the more we pile on the controls, the more confusing, complex, and overwhelming the bureaucratic machine becomes. This has the perverse effect of making governance actually more captive to the specialists in the public service who manage it. Today, nothing in public policy making is clear. Everything has become murky.
Those of us in the policy analysis space that have insight into organisational theory understand this problem all too well. We call it the Principal-Agent problem.
In any major organisation, such as a government, the ultimate stakeholders, that is the principals, delegate management to insiders, who may be regarded as agents. The hope is that the interests of the principals and agents will align. Unfortunately, human nature being what it is, that does not happen. Agents look out for themselves and use their superior understanding and information about the system to siphon off resources for their own benefit. In response, principals pile on checks and controls in a bid to contain the discretion and freedom of action of the agents. Unfortunately, sometimes the checks become unwieldy and overbearing and start to serve as cover for murkier, dirtier dealings by the agents.
Whilst we cannot do away with checks and controls, it has become clear that they alone will not fix the issue of misalignment between principals, such as voters, and agents, such as political officials and senior bureaucrats.
We also need to look at the incentive structures within which these agent-leaders, the politicians and senior public officials, operate.
To keep things simple, we can accept that there are two main incentive types of relevance here. One is focused on extrinsic motivation and the other on intrinsic motivation.
Extrinsic motivation is normally boosted through various rewards and perks, such as better salaries and tools for work. One can look at the Singaporean model for inspiration here.
Because of our current payroll situation, which no political party has the will to tackle, boosting incentives would be tough.
We may need then to focus more on “intrinsic motivation”, using tools that unearth the deeper sense of pride that some have in public service and encouraging those people to multiply in number, rise to the top, and change the value system and eventually the culture of the government organisation of this country.
Those of us in the policy space familiar with organisational theory call this approach, “stewardship”. Rather than trying to transactionally and coercively align the interests of voters and public officials, we can ask fundamental questions about how to amplify the behaviour patterns of public officials who have a strong vision for Ghana’s prosperity.
Doing so becomes even more critical when large sections of the voting population become too partisan, patronage-driven, and captive to ethnic and sectional rather than national interests. In such a system, bureaucratic systems actually become instruments for aligning the narrow interests of some public officials with the parochial interests of certain voter blocs. We have seen how certain large partisan groupings actively lobby for public resources to be spent on them in ways that undermine the national interest.
Even though we have tried so many control measures without success, there are some we are yet to explore. For instance, we think:
- The government must make a hard rule (it can be framed as law) that ministers’ offices shall procure vehicles once in every 10 years en-bloc and auction all existing vehicles. There shall be no luxury vehicles.
- Key government initiatives, eg, NHIS, GETFUND, FSHS, shall be funded by direct taxes, which shall not be capped or repurposed.
- The Auditor-General should be appointed through an open process between the Public Services Commission and Parliament, and there must be a convention to let the opposition party pick the candidate.
- Make the OSP handle all criminal prosecutions and create a solicitor general to handle all government civil cases and create an office of President’s Counsel at the flagstaff house.
The stewardship model aims to balance that by providing a complement to controls and restraints. We wholeheartedly accept that one can not switch completely from principal-agent based bureaucratic models to a stewardship paradigm. However, bureaucratic controls can be made less soulless and hollow by infusing the spirit of stewardship into public sector governance. How will this work in practice?
IMANI is proposing a mission-based approach.
First, ministers and Chief Directors will voluntarily sign on to a framework of openness and stakeholder co-creation of a defined aspect of their sectoral vision for the country.
Second, they will commit to open data and radical transparency.
Third, they will hold bi-weekly hybrid (physical and virtual) townhalls where every aspect of the procurement, performance, operations, milestones tracking, and monitoring & evaluation elements shall be openly discussed. Any answers not immediately available shall be made available within a week.
Fourth, citizens who tune in can join the stakeholder group for the Vision. A simple digital enrolment system shall be used to keep things organised.
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Fifth, every month, a poll shall be taken to take the pulse of the stakeholder group. Only stakeholders who made it to at least one of the townhalls can participate.
At the six month mark, the official will be celebrated for the progress made and given feedback to improve.
Naturally, this model, which we are calling RESET – Revitalising the Economy through Stewardship & Ethical Transformation – will not replace the formal audits and other PFM controls. Our hope is that it will invigorate them. Bring the essence in them to the fore and make them more meaningful to citizens.
Of course, this is just a crude draft of an idea. At IMANI, we do hope that some form of this model can be built upon to complement the official PFM strategy that this country has embraced.
Sometime ago, we implemented an award model for inspirational public sector leaders. We did so in a similar spirit until we realised that this was also too top-down and that traditional award schemes do not boost intrinsic motivation. They are another form of perk.
The RESET Challenge we are proposing is thus designed to be driven by the public official’s own sense of patriotic ambition. It draws its energy from her moral imagination. They propel their ethical leadership forward through their own desire for legacy through the betterment of their country.
Join us in refining this idea or design your own even better stewardship model. But you know deep down in your heart that the current approach to safeguarding the public purse in Ghana has to change radically. We can not continue as before. Thank you.
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This is a summary of a presentation IMANI’s Founding President and CEO gave at the National Economic Dialogue on March 3rd, 2025,
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