Economic complexity and employment for women and youth : the case of Ghana

Ghana’s growth performance can appropriately be analysed within three distinct periods: 1960-1983, 1984-2006, and 2007-2017. The country’s growth performance prior to 1984 can best be described as erratic with negative growth in six out of 24 turbulent years. Most of the years of negative growth coincided with a period of intense political instability and external shocks (Alagidede et al., 2013). After experiencing its first coup d’etat in 1966, the country recorded four1 other successful military takeovers prior to 1983, and each of these regimes witnessed abandonment of policies and projects pursued by their predecessors. Agriculture was the country’s major economic activity, accounting for over 60% of GDP and constituted the main foreign exchange earner through cocoa exports. The major thrust of the country’s policies, particularly within the first decade after independence and in most part of the 1970s, was inward looking and public sector led economic strategy.