FACT-CHECK: Ghana has the best road networks in West Africa?

Claim: Ghana has the best road networks in West Africa

Source: Facebook page

Verdict: FALSE

Researched by Gifty Tracy Aminu

Has the World Economic Forum (WEF) said Ghana has the best road networks in West Africa? That is the claim being made by a Facebook page, Ghana the Black Star of Africa.

The Facebook post published on March 12 has generated more than 5,800 interactions including being shared by more than 350 Facebook users, a leading content discovery and social monitoring platform for publishers- CrowdTangle has showed.

This fact-check report seeks to verify the accuracy of the claim.

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World Economic Forum

The World Economic Forum (WEF) is an international organization that engages with business, political, academic and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas.

The forum publishes benchmark global reports on Competitiveness, Gender, and Risk.

Global Competitiveness Report

The Global Competitiveness Report (GCR) series, first launched in 1979, is a yearly report published by the World Economic Forum which features the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI).

The GCI measures the set of institutions, policies, and factors that determine the level of productivity of a country, which is based on 12 pillars of competitiveness.

In 2020, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic meant the long-standing Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) rankings was paused and instead, a special edition was published dedicated to elaborating on the priorities for economic recovery and revival and considering the building blocks of a transformation towards new economic systems that combine “productivity”, “people” and “planet” targets.

This report covered a small set of countries (37), measuring only those priorities for economic transformation rather than the complete set of factors needed to drive productivity, sustainability and shared prosperity.

Fact-check

To assess the claim therefore GhanaFact referred to the World Economic Forum’s 2019 edition of the Global Competitiveness Report.

After assessing the performance of 11 out of 16 countries in the sub-region captured in the document, nowhere does it say or conclude that “Ghana has the best road networks in West Africa.”

To understand what the 2019 Global Competitiveness Report said about Ghana, we scrutinized the country’s performance under the infrastructure pillar, which is one of 12 used for the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) rankings. We then probed the 12 subareas under the infrastructure pillar which include road connectivity and quality of road infrastructure.

West African countries in 2019 GCI rankings

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Based on the World Economic Forum (WEF) ranking of road connectivity across 141 economies, Ghana ranked 79th, which when compared with the other 9 West African countries ranked in the report puts Ghana at 6th in the sub-region.

This makes the claim that “Ghana has the best road networks in West Africa,” FALSE.

Quality of Road Infrastructure 

Another sub-metric ranked in the Global Competitiveness Report is the quality of road infrastructure, which Ghana emerged 118 out of 141 economies assessed. This ranking when compared with the performance of 10 other West African countries mentioned in the report puts Ghana at 8th in the sub-region.

West African countries in 2019 GCI rankings

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Five West African countries including Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Niger, Sierra Leone and Togo were not featured in the 2019 Global Competitiveness Report.

Verdict

The claim that the World Economic Forum (WEF) has ranked Ghana as having the best road infrastructure is FALSE.