Sub-National Consultations Consolidated Report - Ghana

The UN in Ghana, through the Resident Coordinator's Office, held sub-national consultations to bring regional, district and community perspectives into the Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework 2027-2030. Designed as a bottom-up complement to the Country Analysis, the process tested national priorities against lived realities, assessed whether interventions reach different groups, identified those at risk of being left behind, and clarified where UN support adds most value.

Covering six regions across three belts (Upper East and Savannah; Ashanti and Bono East; Volta and Western), the consultations engaged 491 participants. They showed that development challenges are interconnected: youth unemployment reflects weak pathways from education and skills training into decent work; education outcomes are shaped by poverty, adolescent pregnancy, substance use and child protection gaps; environmental degradation affects agriculture, water, health and livelihoods; and geographic isolation deepens exclusion.

Youth employment, climate pressures and natural resource management were common themes, but priorities varied by area:

• Northern Belt: food security and irrigation, peace and security, displacement, drug use and trafficking, and access to services in hard-to-reach communities.
• Middle Belt: the youth-skills-employment nexus, informal economy, agriculture, local economic development, and the impacts of galamsey.
• Southern Belt: flooding, coastal erosion, water pollution, agriculture and fisheries in coastal and extractive areas.