Gauging Development Progress In Ghana

(Begin with development progress and see all other articles in this set below)

In addition to asking Ghanaians about their priority development issues, the AudienceScapes 2009 survey in Ghana asked them to judge their country’s development progress over the past four or five years. These questions were derived from six targets included in the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, which participating countries have pledged to meet by 2015. [1]

Chart 1
            

As Chart 1 shows, a clear majority of respondents feel that Ghana has made at least some progress overall, albeit to varying degrees depending on the issue (other possible responses were “not a lot of progress” and “no progress at all”). The generally positive view of the country’s development gains suggested by these results is in contrast to objective measures showing there are still significant unfulfilled needs in many of the areas covered in these questions. This runs counter to the commonly held view that perceptions of issues and problems are typically worse than the actual state of affairs.

There was a high level of consistency across demographic groups in response to the development progress questions, with the exception of universal access to clean drinking water. Fewer rural residents (73 percent) than urban residents (79 percent) say there has been progress; those with no formal education are less likely than respondents with any formal education to say there has been progress (71 percent versus 76 percent of each group).

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[1] A full description of the Millennium Development Goals is available at www.un.org/millenniumgoals