By Emmanuel Edudzie
Executive Director, YOTA
An independent review by
Youth Opportunity and Transformation in Africa (YOTA)
In December 2025, YOTA assessed Ghana’s 2026 Budget and rated it 2.1 out of 3 – Moderately Youth Responsive. We welcomed its commitments to digital skills, secondary education and youth empowerment, while cautioning that the real test would be implementation: whether money would be released, services delivered and young people reached in ways that improved their learning, livelihoods and well-being.
Six months into implementation, the 2026 Mid-Year Fiscal Policy Review enables us to return to that test. Our conclusion is deliberately measured: the Budget is delivering more strongly for young people in selected areas, but not yet broadly or transparently enough to justify a higher overall rating. We therefore retain the 2.1 score. The direction of travel is cautiously positive; the structural gaps remain.
Why implementation evidence matters
A Budget commitment is important, but it is only the beginning of a delivery chain. An allocation is not a release. A payment is not necessarily a completed service. A training place is not automatically a qualification, a decent job or higher earnings. For public investment to be genuinely youth responsive, it must move through these stages and show who benefited, whether access was equitable and whether outcomes improved.
The Mid-Year Review provides more evidence of financial execution than was available in December. It reports substantial payments across education, youth employment, apprenticeship and tertiary access. It also describes implementation activity in infrastructure, agriculture, energy and healthcare. These are meaningful developments. Yet the reporting still concentrates on money paid and jobs projected, with limited information about youth-specific reach, service quality or outcomes.
Education is the clearest area of progress
The strongest implementation signals are in education. Government reports GH¢4.2 billion paid to the Ghana Education Trust Fund and GH¢1.8 billion to Free Secondary Education. These payments reinforce the Budget’s emphasis on educational access, although Government should clarify how the two financing streams relate and what outputs each has financed.
The Review also describes a US$300 million secondary education transformation initiative supported by the World Bank. It covers 210 interventions: 10 new schools, rehabilitation of 150 schools, upgrading of 50 schools and the provision of furniture. Government expects about 2.3 million students to benefit when the work is completed. Importantly, the initiative refers to underserved regions, greater female participation in STEM and TVET, and digital, technical and green skills.
This strengthens confidence in the education pipeline. But expected beneficiaries are not current beneficiaries. Future reporting should distinguish projects contracted, commenced and completed; schools made operational; students actually reached; and changes in retention, completion and learning. It should also disclose accessibility provisions for learners with disabilities.
The reported GH¢45 million payment for the National Apprenticeship Programme is another positive development. It begins to respond to the weakness YOTA identified in school-to-work transitions. To demonstrate results, the programme must now publish enrolment, completion, certification, employer participation, placement, earnings and retention data, disaggregated by age, sex, disability and region.
Similarly, GH¢537 million is reported as paid for the No Fees Stress Policy. This is highly relevant to tertiary-age young people and could reduce financial barriers to education. Its impact will depend on transparent information about the number and profile of beneficiaries, distribution across institutions, targeting, student retention and completion.
Youth employment financing is visible, but outcomes are not
Government reports GH¢459 million paid to the Youth Employment Agency to support job creation for young people. This is a significant and directly youth-relevant implementation signal. However, the Mid-Year Review does not state how many young people were supported, through which modules, for how long, at what wage or with what transition into sustained employment.
This distinction is crucial. Temporary placements can provide income and experience, but youth policy should ultimately be judged by the quality and durability of work. YEA should therefore publish beneficiary numbers, working conditions, completion, progression and sustained-employment outcomes.
Large national investments may also expand economic opportunity. The Review projects about 25,000 direct and indirect jobs from agricultural enclave roads and more than 250,000 from integrated oil-palm development. It also refers to employment from energy and wider infrastructure projects. These figures signal potential, not realised youth jobs. They do not show the share for people aged 15–35, whether positions will be permanent, whether pay and conditions will meet decent-work standards, or how young women and persons with disabilities will participate.
Every major employment-generating investment should therefore include explicit youth targets, local recruitment plans, apprenticeship pathways, occupational safety requirements, sex and disability inclusion measures, and public reporting on jobs actually created.
A better economy helps, but it does not prove youth impact
The broader economic environment is more encouraging. The Review reports 6.4 per cent real GDP growth in the first quarter of 2026, 6.3 per cent non-oil growth, end-June inflation of 5.3 per cent, lower short-term interest rates and a debt-to-GDP ratio of 45.0 per cent.
Lower inflation can protect household purchasing power. Stronger non-oil growth can support domestic demand. Lower interest rates may eventually improve investment conditions. Yet these national indicators do not establish that youth unemployment has fallen, that young entrepreneurs can access finance or that young workers’ earnings and security have improved. The labour-market figures cited in the Review largely relate to 2025 and are not youth-disaggregated.
Macroeconomic stability creates a platform. Youth-responsive institutions and delivery systems determine whether young people can stand on it.
The most important original programmes are still difficult to track
Most of the 14 interventions in YOTA’s December assessment receive no identifiable programme-specific update in the Mid-Year Review. These include the National Employment Trust, One Million Coders Programme, Regional Digital Centres, FinTech Growth Fund, Work Abroad Programme, Complementary Basic Education, District Skills and Entrepreneurship Roadshow, National Service reforms and the Ministry of Youth Development and Empowerment.
The absence of a reference in a selective fiscal speech does not prove that implementation has stopped. It does mean that the public cannot assess progress from the Government’s principal mid-year accountability document. This is particularly important for the digital flagships, which underpinned one of the original Budget’s strongest youth-facing pillars.
Government should publish a concise implementation dashboard for every flagship youth measure, showing approved allocation, release, expenditure, procurement and delivery status, beneficiaries and outcomes.
Inclusion and youth voice require greater attention
The Mid-Year Review reports payments to LEAP and School Feeding, which support household welfare, but it does not identify youth-specific reach or additional protection for unemployed young people, young mothers, young people not in education, employment or training, or low-income jobseekers.
Disability inclusion is also largely invisible. There is no systematic account of accessible infrastructure, assistive technology, reasonable accommodation, inclusive recruitment or enterprise support for young people with disabilities.
Young people’s participation in budget implementation and oversight is not reported either. Youth-responsive budgeting is not only about spending on young people; it is also about enabling them to influence priorities and scrutinise results. Ghana needs structured youth participation in pre-budget consultations, programme monitoring and public expenditure accountability.
What should happen next?
For the remainder of 2026, the priority is transparency linked to delivery. Government should publish programme-level execution and beneficiary data for the original youth flagships; disclose results for apprenticeship, YEA, and No Fees Stress; and apply youth, gender, disability, and decent work requirements to large job-generating investments.
For the 2027 Budget, Ghana should institutionalise youth budget tagging, publish a consolidated youth expenditure and outcomes annex, finance a coherent school-to-work transition system, introduce targeted youth social protection, and establish a National Youth Pre-Budget Consultation with a published Government response.
The mid-year evidence gives grounds for cautious optimism. Money is moving in several important areas, and new opportunities are being prepared. The next test is whether implementation can be converted into transparent, equitable and lasting improvements in young people’s lives.
That is why YOTA’s rating remains 2.1 out of 3 – Moderately Youth Responsive. Progress should be recognised. But Ghana’s young people deserve more than promising inputs and projected benefits. They deserve demonstrable results.
