Economist Professor Godfred Bokpin has urged Ghana and other African countries to move away from economies that depend heavily on natural resources if they want to achieve sustainable development.

Speaking at the 2026 Students and Young Professionals African Liberty Academy on Tuesday, August 25, 2026, Professor Bokpin called on Ghana to build an economy driven by ideas, innovation and digitisation.

“We must move to an idea-generation economy that builds on innovation and digitisation to scale up growth and development,” he said.

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According to him, reliance on natural resources has created a growth model that puts pressure on the environment and cannot support sustainable development in the long term.

“Any growth model that relies extensively on natural resources would never deliver sustainable growth and development. It would never, and no country has actually, through that path, delivered sustainable development for anyone to reference,” he added.

He said Ghana’s development challenges demonstrate the need to rethink how the economy is structured.

“Until we switch to an idea-generation economy, innovation, competition, better ways of delivering the same outcome, how do we achieve more with less and the rest of them, we are never going to come out of this,” he remarked.

Professor Bokpin said Ghana’s youthful population represents a major opportunity for change, noting that almost 58% of the population is below 30.

“You should not wake up with despair. The power to transform this country is in your hands,” he said.

He challenged young people to embrace innovation and competition based on ideas rather than political or personal attacks.

“I want to challenge you that let’s treasure idea generation. Let’s treasure the competition that is based on ideas rather than who is insulting more than the other,” he said.

ANAS/MA

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