Evidence of Akufo-Addo's 1D1F projects hard to get with 4 months to December polls

Evidence of a manifesto promise by Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to build a factory in all 216 districts across the country before the end of his first term has become difficult to obtain.

With four months to the date of expiration of Nana Akufo-Addo's term on December 7, 2020, a comprehensive list of all completed projects and the districts in which they can be found remains elusive.

The One-District One-Factory (1D1F) programme is Akufo-Addo government’s strategy to increase agricultural productivity and ensure a sustainable supply of food at a cheaper cost while creating jobs for the youth.

The promise to establish a factory in every factory was hailed for being forward-looking but also criticised for being too ambitious.

The programme was also mocked for adding to the mono-syllabic promises the then-presidential candidate for the New Patriotic Party (NPP) was making in the run-up to the 2016 election.

Those who mocked the 1D1F programme did so because it added to the numerous catchy slogans such as ‘One-Village One-Dam’ and ‘$1 Million One-Constituency’ that projected the Akufo-Addo 2016 campaign. The 1D1F is among the many policy proposals that won him the race to the Jubilee House.

As part of a series of manifesto monitoring drive, GhanaWeb probed the status of the 1D1F promise but has been able to trace 58 projects to a given district.



GhanaWeb checks reveal that beyond the 58 1D1F projects released by the government in 2019 as evidence of 1D1F project, it is unable to provide evidence of further progress.

The 58 companies that were released by the government last year included very familiar names in the manufacturing, recycling, agro and wood processing industries.

At the time of filing this story, persistent probing by GhanaWeb through phone calls to the 1D1F Secretariat for any evidence of added projects have yielded no results for at least two weeks.

Several assurances by the Secretariat to provide a full list of the completed projects to enable effective tracking have not been fulfiled.

Meanwhile, at a town hall meeting to tout government's infrastructural achievements on Tuesday, August 18, 2020, Vice President, Dr Mahamamudu Bawumia said 183 companies are currently benefiting from the 1D1F initiative.

"Out of [the 183 projects] 61 are existing companies. 1D1F doesn’t deal with new companies. If you are an existing company, and you need a capital injection to expand, you can benefit from the incentives of the 1D1F…

"One hundred and twenty-two are new companies. Till date, 48 of the existing company projects have been completed and are operational. Of the 122 new companies, 28 are completed while 31 are at various stages of completion. In addition, 58 special youth enabled 1D1F projects have common user-processing factories," Dr Bawumia said.

However, no evidence of the completed factories and the districts in which they can be found was provided during the audio-visual presentation at the town hall meeting.

GhanaWeb checks on the newly launched infrastructure tracker (www.deliverytracker.gov.gh) did not yield any results.

GhanaWeb is, therefore, republishing all the list of the 58 projects under the 1D1F programme that the Trade Ministry released last year.