In the immediate aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, the government of Ghana provided grants totalling US$5 million to 373 small- and medium-sized enterprises through the Ghana Economic Transformation Project to support their recovery from the crisis.
In the longer term, the government introduced a series of initiatives to address the multiple crises facing the country. These include ‘YouStart’, which aims to create a million jobs for young people through the provision of soft loans for establishing youth-led enterprises; ‘Mobilising for a Greener Future’, which seeks to restore degraded landscapes, mitigate climate change and promote national awareness of the importance of environmental protection; ‘Planting for Food and Jobs’, which seeks to boost food security and create jobs through agricultural modernisation; ‘One District One Factory’ designed to expand the productive capacities of new and existing district enterprises; and the ‘National Alternative Employment and Livelihood Project’, which aims to provide sustainable alternative livelihoods for illegal miners and people
affected by the sanitisation of the mining sector while restoring lands.
Regrettably, there has been limited trade union consultation on and involvement in the implementation of these programmes.