Beyond the Balance Sheet: The Untold Human Cost of Ghana’s 2022–2023 Economic Crisis

There is an experience a friend of mine will never forget. He wrote it in his diary the evening it happened, and he shared it with me recently as we sat reminiscing about one of the most difficult seasons of our lives.

He is a banker. Every morning he wore a suit and tie to work. To his family, to his neighbours, to anyone who saw him boarding a taxi or walking into a branch, he looked the part — composed, professional, seemingly comfortable. Nobody would have believed what was happening behind that appearance.

One afternoon in 2023, he set out to buy a 5kg bag of rice. It was selling for ₵130. He did not have enough. A driver at his branch, seeing his situation, offered a practical suggestion — he knew a spot in the open market where you could get an “olonka” of local rice for just ₵25. A smaller quantity, a humbler option, but it would do. My friend agreed and went. By the time he arrived, the price had risen to ₵60. He could not afford that either. He walked away empty-handed.

He had a car. But the engine had broken down and sat unattended for weeks because he could not afford the repairs. When he finally managed to fix it, he could not afford to buy fuel to drive it. A banker with a car he could not move, unable to buy even an “olonka” of rice.

That year — 2023 — was brutal for many Ghanaians, but there was a particular, private cruelty to what banking professionals experienced. On the surface, the sector looked functional. Beneath it, the structural pressures were immense.

The Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDEP), launched in December 2022, compelled bondholders to swap existing high-yielding instruments for new ones at drastically reduced rates, with some bondholders losing between 30 and 50 percent of the value of their portfolios virtually overnight.¹ For the banks themselves, losses across 22 financial institutions were estimated at GH₵37.7 billion in 2022 alone.² The strain on loan quality was equally severe — the Non-Performing Loan (NPL) ratio climbed to 20.7 percent by the end of 2023, up sharply from 14.8 percent the previous year.³ Meanwhile, inflation was eroding whatever remained of ordinary people’s purchasing power. Ghana’s annual inflation rate stood at 31.26 percent in 2022 and rose further to 38.11 percent in 2023,⁴ with food inflation running even higher — peaking at 51.8 percent in May 2023, according to the Ghana Statistical Service.⁵

The strain did not stop at institutional balance sheets — it trickled down directly to staff. In many banks, traditional staff loan facilities had become restricted or unavailable, and what was offered in their place were cash-backed loan options secured against employees’ own provident funds. Workers were, in effect, borrowing against their own retirement savings just to meet day-to-day needs. My friend was one of them. When he approached a money lending firm for a modest GH₵3,000 to meet an urgent personal need — an amount he could not raise even through these internal channels — he was declined. He did not qualify. He had already borrowed against himself as far as the system would allow. It is worth noting that seeking such a loan from an external money lending firm was itself against his bank’s policy. He knew that. But he had no other option, and desperation has a way of making policy feel like a distant concern.

His family did not know what he was going through. He could not bring himself to tell them. He feared that if he did, they would not believe him — that they would look at the suit and tie and conclude he was simply being wicked, unwilling rather than unable. So he said nothing, and carried it alone.

I lived through my own version of this season.

Unable to see a clear path forward in banking, I made the difficult decision to walk away from my career in the sector and accept a separation package the bank was offering. My plan was specific: use the payout to complete an ongoing project, which I intended to use to secure financing and launch a new chapter in business. I had calculated it carefully. I was certain. The facility was declined.

The plan I had built everything around collapsed, and I was left standing in a place I had not prepared for — no job, no facility, and no clear next step. I had to begin again from scratch. I explored ideas, drafted plans, and considered relocating. Eventually, through that disorienting process of elimination and reinvention, I found what I now believe I was always meant to do. The detour, painful as it was, led me exactly where I needed to be.

The fuller details of that journey are a story for another day — perhaps a book. What I will say for now is this: life was genuinely tough. And yet we smiled. We showed up. We kept our composure in public while quietly carrying more than anyone around us knew. We suffered from within, and we smiled through it. That, too, is a kind of courage.

Across the sector, quietly and then all at once, people started leaving. Colleagues. Friends. Senior staff. Members of management. Roughly three in every ten people in some teams packed up and relocated abroad in search of what Ghana, at that moment, seemed unable to offer them.

Some have found what they were looking for. Many, if they are honest, will tell you they have not. Opportunity, it turns out, does not automatically follow geography.

But I do not write this to judge those who left. I write it for those who stayed — and for those who left and are now wondering if they made a mistake. Because here is what I have learned from watching lives, including my own, move through seasons of severe difficulty:

‘A hard chapter does not determine the length or the quality of the story.’

One answered prayer. One unexpected opportunity. One moment where the right door opens at the right time. That is all it takes for a narrative to turn completely around. I have seen it happen. I have lived it.

The numbers tell their own story of recovery. Ghana’s banking sector, which bore the full brunt of the DDEP crisis, is gradually finding its footing again. The Bank of Ghana reported that the NPL ratio declined to 18.7 percent in February 2026, down from 22.6 percent recorded in February 2025⁶ — a meaningful improvement, even if the sector still has ground to cover. The Banking Sector Soundness Index has risen sharply, nearing pre-DDEP levels, with solvency ratios, liquidity buffers, and earnings performances all showing improvement.⁷ Inflation, which peaked at over 54 percent in early 2023, has fallen dramatically — dropping to 3.3 percent in February 2026, the lowest reading since August 1999.⁸ GDP growth reached 6.3 percent in the first half of 2025,⁹ signalling that the broader economy is moving in the right direction. The season of acute crisis is passing. The rebuilding is underway.

The economy has not fully healed, and life in Ghana still demands resilience from ordinary people every single day. But things are gradually improving. And for those of us who walked through 2022 and 2023 wondering how we would survive the week, there is something quietly powerful about being able to say: we are still here. We are still building. The season was hard — but it did not have the final word.

My friend is proof of that. The man who once walked away from a market unable to afford an “olonka” of rice today sends his mother ₵1,000 or ₵1,500 without feeling it. Same man. Same God. Different seasons.

‘Do not let hard seasons convince you that a beautiful life is not possible for you.’

It is. It is still possible. And it is closer than it feels.

Author: Felix Ekow Eshun
Founder, Lixfel
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References
¹ Economic Governance Platform Ghana. (2025). Impact of the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDEP) on Individual Investors. Retrieved from https://egpghana.org/impact-of-the-domestic-debt-exchange-programme-ddep-on-individual-investors/

² Amoah, B. (2023, November 22). Ghana’s original DDEP and revised DDEP banking sector impact 2022–2023: An autopsy. The Business & Financial Times. Retrieved from https://thebftonline.com/2023/11/22/ghanas-original-ddep-and-revised-ddep-banking-sector-impact-2022-2023-an-autopsy/

³ Fitch Ratings, as reported by Ghanamma.com. (2024, March 1). Ghanaian banks’ profitability minimises DDEP impact. Retrieved from https://www.ghanamma.com/2024/03/01/ghanaian-banks-profitability-minimizes-ddep-impact-fitch/

⁴ Macrotrends. (2024). Ghana inflation rate 1965–2024. Retrieved from https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/gha/ghana/inflation-rate-cpi

⁵ Ghana Statistical Service. (2023, June 14). Consumer Price Index and Inflation: May 2023. Retrieved from https://statsghana.gov.gh/gssmain/storage/img/marqueeupdater/CPI%20May_2023.pdf

⁶ Bank of Ghana. (2026, March 19). Ghana banking sector shows strong recovery — Governor. Ghana Business News. Retrieved from https://www.ghanabusinessnews.com/2026/03/19/ghana-banking-sector-shows-strong-recovery-governor/

⁷ Modern Ghana. (2025, October 29). Ghana’s financial sector recovery deepens as banks post stronger balance sheets and renewed confidence. Retrieved from https://www.modernghana.com/news/1444469/ghanas-financial-sector-recovery-deepens-as-banks.html

⁸ Trading Economics. (2026). Ghana inflation rate. Retrieved from https://tradingeconomics.com/ghana/inflation-cpi

⁹ News Ghana. (2025, November 27). Bank of Ghana balances inflation control with growth concerns. Retrieved from https://www.newsghana.com.gh/bank-of-ghana-balances-inflation-control-with-growth-concerns/