body-container-line-1

FACT-CHECK: Does Ghana have the best road networks in West Africa?

By Gideon Kwame Sarkodie OSEI
Special Report FACT-CHECK: Does Ghana have the best road networks in West Africa?
JUL 14, 2021 LISTEN

Claim: Ghana has the best road networks in West Africa

Verdict: FALSE, According to the latest World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report, Ghana ranked 6th and not 1st and cannot be said to have the best road network in West Africa.

Full Text

A Facebook page Ghana the Black Star of Africa says the World Economic Forum (WEF) said Ghana has the best road networks in West Africa.

The Facebook post published on March 12 has generated more than 5,800 interactions including more than 350 Facebook shares, leading content discovery and social monitoring platform for publishers- CrowdTangle has shown.

714202111519-rvmyqdc553-pasted-image-0

Verification

The World Economic Forum

The World Economic Forum is the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation. The Forum engages the foremost political, business, cultural, and other leaders of society to shape global, regional, and industry agendas.

It was established in 1971 as a not-for-profit foundation and is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. It is independent, impartial, and not tied to any special interests.

The forum publishes benchmark global reports on Competitiveness, Gender, and Risk.

Global Competitiveness Report

The Global Competitiveness Report (GCR) series, first launched in 1979, is a yearly report published by the World Economic Forum which features the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI).

The GCI measures the set of institutions, policies, and factors that determine the level of productivity of a country, which is based on the 12 pillars of competitiveness.

In 2020, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic meant the long-standing Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) rankings were paused, and instead, a special edition was published dedicated to elaborating on the priorities for economic recovery and revival and considering the building blocks of a transformation towards new economic systems that combine “productivity”, “people” and “planet” targets.

The report featured a small set of 37 countries measuring only those priorities for economic transformation rather than the complete set of factors needed to drive productivity, sustainability, and shared prosperity.

To assess the claim, Dubawa Ghana referred to the World Economic Forum’s 2019 Global Competitiveness Report.

After assessing the performance of 11 out of 16 countries in the sub-region captured in the document, nowhere does it say or conclude that “Ghana has the best road networks in West Africa.”

In verifying what the 2019 Global Competitiveness Report said about Ghana, we scrutinized the country’s performance under the infrastructure pillar, which is one of 12 used for the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) rankings. We then probed the 12 sub-areas under the infrastructure pillar which include road connectivity and quality of road infrastructure.

West African countries in 2019 GCI rankings (Road Connectivity)

714202111518-j5eq27t2gb-unnamed

714202111519-0e72xlkwwr-unnamed-1

Based on the World Economic Forum (WEF) ranking of road connectivity across 141 economies, Ghana ranked 79th, which when compared with the other nine West African countries ranked in the report puts Ghana at 6th in the sub-region.

This makes the claim that “Ghana has the best road networks in West Africa,” Not TRUE.

Quality of Road Infrastructure

Another sub-metric ranked in the Global Competitiveness Report is the quality of road infrastructure, in which Ghana emerged 118 out of 141 economies assessed. This ranking when compared with the performance of 10 other West African countries mentioned in the report puts Ghana at 8th in the sub-region.

West African countries in 2019 GCI rankings (Quality of Road Infrastructure)

714202111519-0e72xlkwwr-unnamed-1

Five ECOWAS states including Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Niger, Sierra Leone, and Togo were not featured in the 2019 Global Competitiveness Report.

Conclusion

The claim that the World Economic Forum (WEF) has ranked Ghana as having the best road infrastructure is FALSE.

The Fact Checker produced this fact-check per the 2021 Kwame Karikari Fact-checking Fellowship in partnership with ADARS FM (RADIO) to facilitate the ethos of truth in journalism and enhance media literacy in the country

body-container-line