Claim: Three claims on road construction, growth rate and cocoa production
Source: President Akufo- Addo
Verdict: 2 TRUE, 1 FALSE
Ghana’s President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo on March 30, 2022, delivered the State of the Nation Address in parliament – originally scheduled for Thursday, March 3, 2022, the address was initially postponed until further notice.
The address which is mandated by the country’s 1992 constitution demands that the President at the beginning of each session of Parliament and before a dissolution of Parliament delivers a message on the State of the Nation.
For more than an hour, President Akufo-Addo presented the address and shared the government’s assessment of various sectors including the economy, education, health, infrastructure, tourism, peace and security, agriculture among others.
This fact-check report will assess 3 claims made by President Akufo-Addo in the State of the Nation address.
Claim 1
“Some ten thousand, eight hundred and seventy-five (10,875) kilometres of new roads have been constructed in these five (5) years.”
Fact-check
Ghana has a total road network of about 80,000 kilometres (km), according to the Ministry of Roads and Highways – hence the claim by the President would mean about 13.5% of Ghana’s road network would have been constructed between 2017 and 2021.
But the claim sharply contradicts a report by the Ministry of Roads and Highways on the number of roads the Akufo-Addo-led government has constructed in the last 5 years.
According to the Minister for Roads and Highways, Kwasi Amoako-Attah, a total of 4263.37 km of roads have been constructed within the period and this has been widely reported by a number of credible online news platforms, here, here, here and here.
