_Ghana should engage BRICS, Western institutions, African platforms and Gulf investors, but judge every partnership by the jobs, production, technology and resilience it delivers._
*Kwabena Nyantakyi*
September 2026
The 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi on 12 and 13 September 2026 offers a useful starting point for Ghana's debate about the multipolar world. Ghana was not a BRICS member or partner country and therefore had no formal seat at the table. Yet the summit matters because changes in global trade, finance and payment systems can affect the choices available to countries outside the bloc (Press Information Bureau, 2026; Prime Minister's Office of India, 2026).
The emerging multipolar world gives Ghana more possible partners, but more partners do not automatically produce development. *Ghana must therefore pursue practical multi-alignment: engage BRICS where it can secure finance, technology, markets or skills; preserve productive relationships with Western institutions; strengthen African platforms such as AfCFTA and PAPSS; and engage Gulf and Asian capital on transparent, project-by-project terms.*
The test for every relationship should be simple: does it create jobs, increase production, transfer technology, expand exports, strengthen financial stability and help Ghana retain more value at home? If it does not, a diplomatic relationship or financing announcement has limited value.
This article makes three connected claims. First, BRICS can widen Ghana's options, but it is not a substitute for sound judgment or domestic capability. Second, Africa must remain Ghana's first platform through AfCFTA, PAPSS and stronger regional value chains. Third, every external partnership should be judged by whether it strengthens production, jobs, exports and long-term resilience. This is practical multi-alignment, not indecision.
The philosophy behind this approach is African developmental pragmatism. Partnerships are means, not ends. Development should be measured not by the number of alliances Ghana joins or the amount of capital announced, but by the capabilities it builds: productive firms, skilled citizens, African market access, resilient institutions and a larger share of value retained at home. It is Pan-African in outlook, realistic about power and judged by results (Nkrumah, 1963; Sen, 1999).
*What BRICS can offer Ghana, and what it cannot*
BRICS deserves serious attention. The official Indian account of the grouping's 2026 membership puts its 11 full members at 49.5 per cent of the world's population, 40 per cent of global gross domestic product and 26 per cent of global trade (Press Information Bureau, 2026). Those figures explain why Ghana should not treat BRICS as a marginal diplomatic club. They also need to be read carefully. Purchasing-power-parity GDP is useful for comparing the size of domestic economies; nominal GDP, currency markets and reserve assets still matter for borrowing, invoicing and settling external obligations. Aggregate size does not create a single treasury, a single foreign policy or a single industrial strategy.
The pro-BRICS case is strongest when it is stated in practical terms. BRICS presents itself as a platform for cooperation in trade, development finance, technology, energy, agriculture and global governance reform. The New Development Bank's 2025 annual report records 115 projects and a portfolio of USD 35.593 billion at the end of that year, covering clean energy, water, transport, social infrastructure and digital infrastructure (New Development Bank, 2026). The current agenda also puts industrialisation, small and medium-sized enterprises, digital systems, local-currency settlement and resilient supply chains on the table.
For Ghana, that agenda maps onto real needs. The country needs reliable power, better transport, regional trade infrastructure, agro-processing, industrial skills and affordable long-term capital. It would be short-sighted to dismiss a potential source of those capabilities because it is associated with a different geopolitical tradition.
The critical reading is just as important. Carnegie Endowment research describes an expanded BRICS as more influential but also more heterogeneous. Its members and partners have different interests, different relationships with the United States and Europe, and different views about how far institutional reform should go (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2025). Academic research on the New Development Bank makes a similar point: the bank gives BRICS a useful instrument in development finance, but not by itself the structural power to rewrite the rules of the global system (Duggan, Ladines Azalia and Rewizorski, 2022).
The emerging BRICS financial architecture may still contribute to reform, but scholars caution against assuming that it automatically replaces the institutions it criticises. Ayodele (2025) describes this tension as a question of whether BRICS is creating a genuinely different financial order or reproducing familiar institutional practices in a new setting. For Ghana, the lesson is simple: value BRICS for options, not mythology. A summit declaration is a statement of intent. A new lender is useful only when the project is sound, the terms are transparent and the resulting asset earns or saves enough to justify the obligation.
*Local currency alternatives and the dollar's continuing role*
The dollar is still central to global liquidity, but it is not the whole BRICS story. The latest New Delhi Declaration shows that the grouping is pursuing a gradual financial shift: its BRICS Payment Task Force is studying how national payment and messaging systems can work together, while members discuss trade settlement and investment in local currencies. The declaration also acknowledges that there is no one-size-fits-all approach. It does not announce a common BRICS currency or a single payment rail. That is not evidence of failure; it is evidence of a slower, more practical project (Prime Minister's Office of India, 2026).
The change is already visible in particular corridors, even if it is not yet a single BRICS-wide system. At the BRICS Business Forum, Russia's economic development minister said the share of Russia's exports settled in dollars and euros had fallen from 85 per cent three years earlier to 11 per cent. Reuters also reported a Russian official's claim that 90 per cent of Russia's transactions with BRICS partners were being conducted in national currencies. In a separate report, a senior Russian banker said roubles and rupees accounted for 96 per cent of Russia-India bilateral trade. These figures should be attributed rather than presented as one audited BRICS-wide statistic, but they show that local-currency settlement is becoming operational in some high-volume relationships (Financial Express, 2026; Reuters, 2026a; Reuters, 2026b).
Nor does this mean that BRICS has stopped using dollars. The same Reuters report records the Kremlin's statement that Russia does not seek de-dollarisation and remains open to acceptable payment methods. In practice, the pattern is mixed: local currencies are used where bilateral channels work, while dollars or euros remain useful where commodity pricing, reserves, debt service or market depth make them more functional. That is more accurate than either saying the dollar is finished or pretending that nothing is changing (Reuters, 2026a).
The same gradual shift is visible in development finance. Reuters reported that the New Development Bank had raised about one-third of its bond funding in local currencies, principally the Chinese yuan and South African rand, and had targeted 30 per cent of its financing commitments in member currencies over its 2022–26 strategy period (Reuters, 2025). The cumulative effect matters: local-currency channels can reduce reliance on a third currency, lower conversion costs and give governments more options when political or financial shocks disrupt established routes.
But this is where the language of de-dollarisation needs discipline. The Bank for International Settlements' 2025 Triennial Survey found that the US dollar was on one side of 89.2 per cent of global foreign-exchange trades in April 2025, while the renminbi's share was 8.5 per cent (BIS, 2025). That is a measure of global FX-market activity, not a direct measure of intra-BRICS settlement. It tells Ghana that dollar liquidity, pricing and hedging remain important; it does not prove that BRICS' local-currency initiatives are empty. The accurate conclusion is that two developments are occurring at once: the dollar remains dominant in the wider system, while BRICS is building alternatives incrementally in selected corridors.
Local-currency settlement can reduce conversion costs or provide a hedge in selected transactions, but it does not make currency risk disappear. Reuters' account of the Russia-India corridor also records the earlier problem of excess rupee balances and limited convertibility. Ghana must therefore consider market depth, liquidity, the ability to repatriate earnings, the terms of a loan and the currency in which debt service is ultimately owed. A more diversified financial architecture should improve Ghana's bargaining position. It should not replace financial realism with a slogan.
*Ghana's problem is production*
Ghana is considering these choices from a position of recovery, not unlimited fiscal space. The World Bank reports that real GDP grew by 6.0 per cent in 2025, but projects growth to moderate to 4.8 per cent in 2026 and settle near 5 per cent over the medium term. It also warns that the recovery has not yet generated enough quality jobs and remains exposed to commodity prices, energy and fertiliser costs and tighter global financing conditions (World Bank, 2026). Ghana Statistical Service data put headline unemployment at 13.0 per cent in the third quarter of 2025, while average unemployment among people aged 15 to 35 was 21.9 per cent (GSS, 2026b).
Those numbers turn foreign economic policy into a domestic jobs question. Ghana's external partners should be asked what they will help produce in Ghana, which Ghanaian firms will enter the supply chain, what skills will be transferred and how the project will survive after the political ceremony. The questions should apply equally to a BRICS-linked investor, a Western development institution, a Gulf fund or a private company.
The same discipline is needed in commodities. Ghana's official merchandise statistics show the continuing importance of gold, cocoa and petroleum and the prominence of China, India, the United Arab Emirates, Switzerland and South Africa in Ghana's trading relationships (GSS, 2026a). The answer is not to trade less with these markets. It is to move up the value chain: refining and assaying gold; processing cocoa; building credible bauxite-to-aluminium and manganese strategies; and expanding agro-processing, pharmaceuticals, textiles, packaging, software and repair services.
Recent reporting on Ghana's gold-sector reforms makes the point concrete. Formalisation, traceability and greater local retention of value are not merely diplomatic talking points; they affect public revenue, environmental protection and the credibility of Ghanaian exports (Reuters, 2026c). Any strategic minerals or industrial agreement should contain a commercially credible path to local processing, supplier development, training, environmental rehabilitation and transparent fiscal terms. Ghana should welcome foreign capital, but it should stop treating the export of raw materials as the natural end point of development.
*Africa is Ghana's first platform*
Before Ghana seeks a larger role in global payment debates, it should make African trade easier. The African Union describes the African Continental Free Trade Area as a route toward a single market, regional value chains and a stronger African position in global trade. The AfCFTA Secretariat is based in Accra. The Pan-African Payment and Settlement System offers a practical way for participating banks and businesses to settle eligible cross-border transactions in African currencies rather than routing every payment through a foreign currency (African Union, n.d.; PAPSS, n.d.).
A recent peer-reviewed study in Frontiers in Political Science makes the strategic point clearly: African states can use the AU and AfCFTA to form issue-based coalitions and negotiate more equitable trade and development arrangements, but rhetoric alone is insufficient. The gains have to be institutionalised through African capacity and bargaining power (Lahai, Ibrahim and Animashaun, 2026). This is the kind of agency Ghana should pursue.
This debate is also being advanced from Ghana through the Africa Prosperity Network. Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko has been advocating a borderless-Africa agenda built around moving freely, paying seamlessly and trading more. At the launch of the 2027 Africa Prosperity Dialogues, the Network pointed to work on continent-wide mobile-money interoperability involving central banks, payment operators and telecommunications companies. This is not a substitute for PAPSS, and it does not remove the need for sound regulation. It reinforces the practical point: African integration becomes real when a business in Accra can buy, sell and settle across borders with less friction (Starr FM, 2026).
AfCFTA and PAPSS are more immediately relevant to a Ghanaian manufacturer or trader than a distant argument about a new global reserve currency. If a firm in Accra cannot move goods efficiently to Nigeria or Côte d'Ivoire, or cannot settle a transaction without high cost and delay, a grand geopolitical alignment will not create a competitive export business. Ghana should use its position as host of the AfCFTA Secretariat to build a gateway for regional services, trade finance, digital commerce, arbitration, logistics and value-added production.
The World Bank's latest Ghana Economic Update makes the same point from a different angle. Roads carry more than 95 per cent of passenger and freight traffic, while transport systems remain poorly integrated and climate-vulnerable. A previous update put average import clearance at about 14 days, compared with five days in Morocco and seven in Vietnam (World Bank, 2025; World Bank, 2026). These are foreign-policy facts because they decide whether a new market is commercially usable.
*A scorecard for practical multi-alignment*
Ghana needs a disciplined system for deciding which offers deserve the President's attention. A small Strategic Economic Partnerships Council could bring together Finance, Trade, Foreign Affairs, Energy, Transport, Education, the Bank of Ghana, the National Development Planning Commission, Ghana Statistical Service, the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre and the private sector. Its purpose would be delivery, not another layer of speeches.
The council should apply one scorecard to every major external relationship. Does the proposal create jobs, raise export earnings, transfer technology, build local suppliers, protect the environment, carry an affordable financing cost and expose Ghana to manageable currency, security and diplomatic risks? Do the documents disclose guarantees, collateral, take-or-pay clauses, foreign-exchange obligations, beneficial ownership and contingent liabilities? No lender, whether Western, BRICS-aligned, bilateral or private, should receive a political pass.
The New Development Bank should be one bidder in a competitive financing architecture that also includes the African Development Bank, Afreximbank, the World Bank and IFC, European and British development finance, United States partners, Gulf capital and Ghanaian investors. The comparison should be made on price, tenor, risk allocation, procurement, local capability and measurable development results. Local-currency finance should be used where project revenues provide a natural hedge, not because it sounds automatically safer.
Finally, Ghana must do the domestic work that gives diplomacy value: maintain macroeconomic credibility, protect the independence of the Bank of Ghana and official statistics, improve customs and ports, strengthen commercial courts, expand reliable electricity and connect technical education to the industries the country wants to build. External choice is useful only when domestic capability can convert it into income and resilience.
*Development is the measure of independence*
Ghana's independence in a multipolar world will not be measured by the number of summits attended or blocs joined. It will be measured by whether Ghanaian firms can produce more, sell more, retain more value and withstand shocks with fewer choices forced upon them.
That is what practical multi-alignment means. Ghana should be open to all serious partners, dependent on none and anchored in Africa. The opportunity in the multipolar world is real. Turning it into sustainable development will depend on the quality of Ghana's bargaining, institutions and execution.
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