A file photo of Raymond Ablorh
The announcement by Dr. Aubynn, CEO of the Petroleum Hub Development Corporation (PHDC), that the Ghana Petroleum Hub project in Jomoro is slated to create between 500,000 and 800,000 jobs has seized the nation’s attention. While the scale of this promise is dizzying—an immediate cure for our crushing unemployment crisis—it demands not applause, but rigorous, objective scrutiny. Such gargantuan figures are not merely economic forecasts; they are political currency, and must be treated as such.
The Chronology of Delay and the Industrial Paradox
The grand vision of the Petroleum Hub has a legislative birthday: it was officially brought into being by the Petroleum Hub Development Corporation Act, 2020 (Act 1053), championed by the Nana Akufo-Addo Administration. This establishment, now years in the past, was intended to accelerate Ghana’s energy agenda. Yet, the history of the project since its enactment has been one of slow, cumbersome progress, dominated by preparatory works and bureaucratic hurdles rather than the sight of steel and concrete.
This context makes the current headline promises all the more concerning. The Petroleum Hub, envisioned as a colossal $60 billion integrated complex comprising three refineries (900,000 BPSD capacity), five petrochemical plants, and extensive storage facilities, is inherently a capital-intensive and technology-driven venture. These projects are globally renowned for optimizing production with the smallest possible workforce, relying on automation, engineering, and digital control systems, not manual labour.
Dr. Aubynn’s promise presents a profound industrial paradox: that the injection of immense, modern capital will somehow yield unprecedented, obsolete labour demands. Even more startling is the temporal compression of this vision: we are told this half-million workforce must materialize and the hub must be fully operational by 2030, a timeline that is less than a decade away. A project that has taken years merely to finalize land plans and board appointments now claims it will achieve a simultaneous economic leap—including an unbelievable 70% boost to Ghana’s GDP—within a seven-year window. This ratio of preparation-to-delivery strains credulity to its breaking point.
The Unspoken Arithmetic of Job Creation
To grasp the magnitude of the 500,000 to 800,000 job claim, one must consider the entire existing formal employment landscape. For context, the entire public sector employment—the police, teachers, civil servants, and healthcare workers—totals only around 700,000 people. Are we to believe a single, technologically advanced, industrial complex, which remains largely in the conceptual phase three years after its legal establishment, will employ more people than the entire administrative and security apparatus of the state combined?
The job estimates, in reality, are likely an aggregation of direct, indirect, and induced employment figures. While indirect jobs (suppliers, logistics) and induced jobs (local market spending) will exist, the headline figure of direct, sustainable employment in the highly automated core facility is likely to be a mere fraction of the half-million minimum being touted.
A Lesson in Historical Delusion
Ghana has a long, disheartening history of grand projects that dissolve into dust, leaving behind a legacy of abandoned infrastructure and disillusioned populations. We cannot forget the fate of other capital-intensive ventures that promised thousands but delivered hundreds. This new petroleum hub risks becoming the next monument to unfulfilled national ambition, particularly if its feasibility is based on fantastical, politically motivated numbers.
The Petroleum Hub is a necessary and exciting venture for Ghana’s energy security and regional trade potential. It should be supported, but it must be grounded in an unvarnished truth about its economic yield. Misleading the public with astronomical figures and an impossibly short deadline of 2030 does not secure its success; it merely lays the foundation for future disappointment and deepens the well of public distrust in the political and technical elite.
The focus must shift from political hyperbole to pragmatic execution, from selling a fantasy to building a reality. The project will generate good jobs, but the true figures—sustainable, quality jobs—will be far more modest than the current, dizzying promise of a half-million by the year of reckoning. Ghana deserves clarity, not a colossal employment fairy tale.