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A policy think tank, Africa Policy Lens (APL), has unveiled two national tracking tools aimed at assessing governance performance and the economic realities of citizens across Ghana.
The tools, the Ghana Wellbeing Tracker and the Governance Trust Barometer (GTB), were launched in Accra alongside the organisation’s maiden reports. They are designed to provide data-driven insights into institutional trust and household wellbeing using citizen-centred methodologies.
Speaking at the launch, APL’s Director of Research, Dr. Hayford Ayerakwa, said the Governance Trust Barometer offers a structured way to measure how governance is experienced in practice, rather than relying solely on formal institutional indicators.
“The APL’s Governance and Trust Barometer (GTB) offers a systematic, citizen-centred evaluation of governance quality and institutional trust in Ghana,” he noted. “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.”
The GTB aggregates eight key governance domains, namely institutional trust; perceptions of corruption, accountability and rule of law, government communication, citizen voice, electoral confidence, political security, and civic participation—into a single index scaled from 0 to 100.
According to APL, the framework reflects the complex nature of governance, emphasizing that democratic quality extends beyond elections and is shaped by continuous engagement between citizens and state institutions.
In parallel, the Ghana Wellbeing Tracker focuses on the economic conditions faced by households, offering a bottom-up assessment of how citizens navigate daily financial realities.
Dr. Ayerakwa explained that the tool examines critical indicators such as cost-of-living pressures, employment conditions, income trends, business activity, and household financial resilience.
“These indicators are aggregated into the Ghana Wellbeing Index (GWI), a composite score ranging from 0 to 100, providing an overall picture of economic wellbeing across the country,” he said.
APL indicated that both tools are expected to support evidence-based policymaking by aligning government decisions more closely with the lived experiences of citizens.
The initiative comes at a time when calls for improved governance accountability and economic responsiveness are growing, positioning the new indices as potentially valuable instruments for tracking national progress and informing public debate.