The Technical Advisor at the Ministry of Finance, Dr Theo Acheampong, has defended the  government’s projection that the Accra-Kumasi Expressway project could create at least 30,000 jobs, describing the figure as a conservative estimate.

According to him, the employment impact of the project should not be measured only by workers directly engaged on construction sites but also by jobs supported across quarrying, cement production, haulage and other services.

“The short answer is yes, and if anything, the figure is conservative,” Dr Acheampong said in a post on Facebook on Thursday, September 10, 2026, in an analysis of the potential employment impact of the project.

The defence comes on the back of a post by the Minister of Finance, Dr Cassiel Ato Forson, who said that the expressway can create approximately 30,000 direct and indirect jobs.

Dr Acheampong, in his explanation, stated that the infrastructure employment was typically measured in “job-years”, with one full-time position maintained for 12 months counting as one job-year.

He estimated that direct employment could generate between 38,000 and 48,000 job-years during construction, based on an estimated $400 million to $500 million labour component of a project of the scale of the Accra-Kumasi Expressway.

Using a blended annual employment cost of about $10,000, including accommodation, transport and safety equipment, he said he was using the lower estimate of 38,000 direct job-years for his calculation.

He said additional employment would be generated through local procurement and services required to construct the expressway.

“Every truckload of aggregate from a quarry, every bag of cement, every haulage contract and every caterer is a job created by project spending,” he said.

He estimated that domestic purchases of between $1.2 billion and $1.5 billion could support a further 12,000 to 14,000 job-years in quarrying, cement, haulage and services.

That would bring the estimated employment impact to about 50,000 job-years, although he placed the plausible range between 38,000 and 70,000 depending on factors including the labour share of the project, wage levels and the proportion of materials and equipment imported.

Dr Acheampong said that over an estimated 30-month construction period, the project could have about 20,000 people employed at any given time, while more than 50,000 individuals could potentially earn wages from the project before its completion because of labour turnover.

He therefore maintained that the 30,000-job projection should be regarded as a minimum rather than an inflated figure.

“So 30,000 is not an exaggeration: it is the floor,” he said.

He, however, said the longer-term employment impact of the expressway could extend beyond construction, particularly through logistics hubs, industrial parks and improved market access along the corridor.

He noted that the scale of those longer-term benefits would depend partly on how much project expenditure was retained within Ghana.

“By my estimate, every ten percentage points of project spending shifted from imports to Ghanaian suppliers adds roughly 4,000 job-years,” he said.

Dr Acheampong recommended that the construction contracts include local labour and sourcing requirements, while apprenticeship opportunities should be linked to technical and vocational education and training institutions.

He also called for payroll-verified reporting of direct employment figures to make it possible to independently audit the number of jobs created by the project.

The Accra-Kumasi corridor is a major transport route linking Ghana’s economic and commercial centres, and the proposed expressway is expected to improve connectivity and facilitate movement of people and goods between the two cities.