Ghana's growth and the BBC

By Alex Singleton | 25 April 2005

BBC correspondent Peter Day writes:

What we want, said my boss, is good news out of Africa.

So I went to Ghana to find some.

This is the same Ghana where the economy has actually shrunk for much of the past two decades, like so many other places in what the diplomats call sub-Saharan Africa.

That's a truly remarkable claim given that in every year since 1983, Ghana's economy has grown.

It is understandable why Mr Day believes that Ghana has been contracting. After all, it's a claim consistently put forward by the protectionists. But the protectionists do not have reality on their side: if you want to look at a graph of real GDP growth in Ghana since 1970, download this PDF and check out page 11.