The policy think tank Africa Policy Lens (APL) has introduced two new national measurement tools aimed at tracking governance performance and the economic wellbeing of citizens across Ghana.
The tools—the Ghana Wellbeing Tracker and the Governance Trust Barometer—were launched in Accra alongside APL’s inaugural reports. They are designed to provide data-driven insights into how citizens experience governance and economic conditions in their daily lives.
Governance Trust Barometer
The Governance Trust Barometer (GTB) is built around citizen experiences and perceptions, offering an assessment of how governance is felt and understood beyond official institutions.
According to Dr. Hayford Ayerakwa, Director of Research at APL, the tool provides a structured, citizen-focused way of measuring trust in public institutions.
“It is grounded in the lived experiences and perceptions of citizens, capturing how individuals assess the performance, responsiveness, and credibility of the state across core governance functions,” he explained.
The GTB brings together eight key areas, including institutional trust, corruption perceptions, accountability, rule of law, government communication, citizen participation, electoral confidence, and political security. These are combined into a single index scored from 0 to 100.
APL says the framework reflects the broader reality of governance, where public trust is shaped not only by elections but also by everyday interactions between citizens and the state.
Ghana Wellbeing Tracker
The Ghana Wellbeing Tracker focuses on the economic realities of households and how people are coping with daily financial pressures.
Dr. Ayerakwa noted that the tool assesses key aspects of economic life, including cost of living, employment conditions, income trends, business activity, and household financial stability.
“These indicators are combined into the Ghana Wellbeing Index (GWI), which provides an overall score between 0 and 100 to reflect national economic wellbeing,” he said.
APL explained that together, the two tools are intended to strengthen policy analysis and support more responsive decision-making by grounding governance and economic assessments in the lived experiences of citizens.