Every four years, the wheels of Ghana’s local development machinery begin to turn again. Planning teams convene. Consultants are hired. Community meetings are held. The District Planning Coordination Units gather data, analyze priorities, and draft yet another Medium-Term Development Plan (MTDP). It is a familiar ritual. But with all this effort and repetition, a pressing question remains: what’s truly in this MTDP cycle for rural transformation and rural prosperity?
As Ghana’s District Assemblies gear up for yet another round of planning, we must pause and ask whether we are simply producing another bureaucratic document, or if we are genuinely engineering a bold new vision for the prosperity of our rural communities. Because for too long, MTDPs have promised development, but delivered little more than a checklist of disjointed projects. This cycle must be different.
The Rural Reality: Marginalized and Left Behind
Rural Ghana is at a crossroads. While cities expand and global investments pour into urban infrastructure, many rural districts remain mired in poverty, poor services, and extractive economies. Roads are impassable. Schools and clinics are under-resourced. Youth are leaving. Farmers are struggling. Environmental degradation, from illegal mining to deforestation, is escalating.
Yet, year after year, and plan after plan, rural communities are presented with the same recycled interventions: boreholes, small market sheds, reshaped feeder roads, and sometimes a clinic structure without staff or equipment. These are not bad in themselves, but they are not enough. They are not transformational. They do not reflect the urgency or scale of the rural development crisis we face.
What’s Wrong with the Status Quo?
Projectized Thinking Over Transformative Vision
MTDPs often amount to little more than shopping lists of small projects—rather than a bold vision for structural change. They are filled with activities that tick boxes, but do not change lives. There is little room for ambitious, systemic approaches to rural job creation, agro-industrialization, or ecosystem restoration.
Lack of Rural Economic Strategy
Many MTDPs fail to articulate how rural areas can become engines of economic transformation. Where is the roadmap for scaling agro-processing zones, promoting climate-smart agriculture, or connecting farmers to regional and international markets?
Short-Termism and Political Cycles
The four-year planning window is too narrow to achieve lasting impact. Projects are selected based on what can be delivered before the next election, not what will bring real prosperity. This leads to rushed planning, poor execution, and abandoned initiatives.
Tokenistic Participation
Community participation in MTDPs is often symbolic. Chiefs and youth groups may be consulted, but rarely do their voices influence the final document. As a result, the priorities in the plan often reflect elite preferences, not grassroots realities.
Neglect of Spatial and Environmental Planning
Rural development must be spatially guided—yet many plans ignore the Land Use and Spatial Planning Act (Act 925) and the need for coherent land management, ecosystem conservation, and resilience-building in the face of climate change.
This Cycle Must Be Different—Here’s How
If the 2026–2029 MTDPs are to mean anything for rural transformation, they must be grounded in a radically different approach. I propose five key shifts:
1. From Inputs to Impact: Plan for Systems Change
Let’s move beyond counting projects to designing integrated development systems. How can feeder roads, agro-processing, and farmer cooperatives work together to transform local economies? What rural financing models can scale enterprise? What does a sustainable, climate-smart rural district actually look like? Districts must articulate transformation pathways—not just infrastructure goals.
2. Prioritize Rural Youth and Women in the Economy
A transformative MTDP must center the aspirations of rural youth and women—not as beneficiaries, but as drivers of change. That means investing in skills development, market access, ICT infrastructure, and support for entrepreneurship. Rural prosperity will not be achieved without intergenerational equity and gender justice.
3. Embed Rural-Urban Linkages
Rural development does not mean isolation. It means strategically positioning districts within national and global value chains. MTDPs must map and invest in rural-urban linkages: logistics hubs, transport corridors, digital platforms, and trade opportunities that help rural products access urban and export markets.
4. Use Climate Action as a Development Opportunity
Climate change threatens rural livelihoods—but responding to it offers enormous potential for green jobs, renewable energy, regenerative agriculture, and carbon finance. Let MTDPs become climate-smart blueprints that leverage international climate funds and local solutions to build resilient rural economies.
5. Back the Plan with Performance, not Paper
Plans alone don’t change realities. Districts must demand, seek and prioritise real budgets and performance tracking mechanisms. This includes:
Town hall meetings and Citizen scorecards to assess implementation. Annual progress reviews with communities and civil society. Real-time dashboards to track results. Local revenue strategies to reduce donor dependence.
A Call to Action: Planning as if People Matter
The development of the next MTDP is not a mere administrative routine. It is an opportunity—a chance to choose transformation over tinkering.
This time let’s ask hard questions and demand real answers. Let’s not settle for another list of minor projects. Let’s not write plans for donor shelves or political speeches. Let’s plan for people—for farmers, fisherfolk, market women, artisans, and the millions who still wait for development to touch their lives.
Let this MTDP cycle be remembered as the one that dared to imagine rural prosperity not as a dream, but as a deliverable.
The writer is a trained Development Planner, Sustainability Researcher and Research Fellow of the Bureau of Integrated Rural Development (BIRD), Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. Ghana. His email address is: [email protected]
