Hands Off Business …Kufuor Insists State Must Not Compete With Private Sector

Former President John Agyekum Kufuor has said decades of state-dominated industrial policy has systematically destroyed the entrepreneurial spirit needed to build lasting national wealth in Ghana.

He traced the genesis of the wealth-creation-suicide to Ghana’s post-independence economic trajectory.

Speaking as the keynote guest at the inaugural Legacy Dialogue Series, organised by the Design and Technology Institute (DTI) in Accra on Tuesday, April 14, the former president was categorical that when Ghana gained political independence, the state’s insistence on becoming the nation’s chief entrepreneurial and business risk-taker was a fundamental policy error.

He suggested that the private sector, not the state should have been allowed to play that investor-entrepreneur role.

“Gold Coast that became Ghana insisted on the state taking the risk for growing industry and keeping the private sector,” Mr. Kufuor told the audience. “We took that risk-taker out of growing our economy.”

According to the former President, early governments created a sprawling network of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) that left virtually no room for private initiative.

Rather than nurturing a resilient business class, Kufuor argued, the state inadvertently crushed it by experimenting a policy that that ranged from state farms to state factories

“So it was State Farm, state this, state that, leaving out the private sector,” Mr. Kufuor recalled, adding with palpable regret: “They were all destroyed by the state because it seems like the state hadn’t appreciated the necessity for the private sector venture to cooperate with the state to generate wealth.”

The former President compared that era with the philosophy of his own administration (2001–2009), which he branded the “Golden Age of Business.”

He explained that his government deliberately sought to restore confidence in private enterprise as the true engine of economic transformation.

“I thought I should emphasize the necessity to bring back business to usher in the golden age of business,” Mr. Kufuor said, implicitly reminding current policymakers that without a risk-taking business class, the state’s wealth-creation efforts will forever be hamstrung by bureaucratic inefficiency.

The Legacy Dialogue Series, designed to bridge historical experience with future policy, provided a fitting platform for Mr. Kufuor’s reflective but pointed address.

DTI Honours Kufuor

In a related development, the Design and Technology Institute announced that its entrepreneurship hub at the Berekuso campus has been renamed the J. A. Kufuor Centre for Entrepreneurship in recognition of the former President’s longstanding advocacy for private-sector-led growth.

Constance Swaniker, Founder of the Design and Technology Institute, explained that the renaming is far more than a symbolic gesture. She described it as a strategic move to transform the centre into a practical engine for business creation, job generation, and industrial transformation.

The centre is part of a larger multi-skills campus designed to train thousands of young Ghanaians every year, with a strong emphasis on entrepreneurship, technical competencies, and industry-driven innovation.

According to Ms. Swaniker, the facility will act as a pipeline for building sustainable enterprises, particularly among the youth, helping to tackle unemployment while strengthening the country’s productive capacity.

The initiative also echoes growing calls for deeper private sector engagement in skills development, especially as Ghana seeks to move away from being a raw-material export economy toward one anchored in manufacturing and value addition.

The naming is intended as a “living legacy” – one whose success will be measured not by the honour itself, but by the number of businesses launched and jobs sustained over time.

Tuesday’s event in Accra marks the beginning of what organisers hope will be an ongoing national conversation on policy, enterprise, and Ghana’s economic future.