Rising global crude oil prices could rapidly erode Ghana’s financial buffers if the country fails to strengthen its economic systems and reduce its dependence on external shocks, editor of The NewsCenta newspaper, Elvis Darko has warned.
Darko says geopolitical tensions in the Middle East highlight the vulnerability of African economies that lack strong internal resilience.
Speaking on The Forum on Asaase Radio on Saturday (7 March) Darko said oil prices, which were hovering around $93 per barrel over the weekend, could place significant pressure on Ghana’s economy if the trend continues.
He warned that rising oil prices could force the government to spend more resources to stabilise fuel supplies and support the local currency.
“This is a geopolitical factor we can’t control much. I think that if we focus on building the systems here, the geopolitical factors will come but because the economy will be resilient and would have certain buffers, the impact would not be much,” he said.
“But rather we don’t have any of those things so any trigger and the impact is huge.”
“The moment we start seeing increases in crude prices, our buffers will start depleting because government will have to be finding more money in order to get the BDCs to get more fuel,” he said.
AfCFTA failure
He argued that African countries have failed to take full advantage of the opportunities presented by the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which he said should promote industrial cooperation and regional value chains.
Darko suggested that West African oil-producing countries could pool their crude supplies and invest in large-scale refining infrastructure in Nigeria to serve the region.
“That is why I have said that this AfCFTA thing we are talking about our leaders are just talking and they don’t understand anything about what they are saying,” he said.
“Maybe Nigeria has the largest crude producer, and all West African countries that produce some oil ship everything to Nigeria, let’s all have the best refineries in Nigeria,” he said.
Industrial cooperation
He added that such industrial cooperation could also extend to sectors such as cocoa processing, where Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire could lead regional value addition.
“We are talking about raw materials to China and the West and we send our raw materials to them, they add the value and now they come to tell us how much they are selling it,” Darko said.
Without deeper economic integration and industrial partnerships, he warned, AfCFTA risks remaining largely a political aspiration rather than a transformative economic framework.
“AfCFTA has now become a normal talk but the real action, that is what we should be seeing,” he said.
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