Ghana’s fight against corruption showed little measurable progress in 2025 as the country scored 43 out of 100 on the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), ranking 76th out of 182 countries assessed globally, Transparency International Ghana has said.
In a press release issued on February 10, 2026, the anti-corruption watchdog noted that Ghana’s score reflects persistent corruption challenges, weak enforcement of existing legal and policy frameworks, and fragile state institutions mandated to combat corruption. Although the 2025 score represents a marginal improvement from 42 recorded in 2024, Transparency International stressed that the change does not amount to a statistically significant improvement under the CPI methodology.
Ghana has effectively remained stuck at a score of 43 since 2020, highlighting a prolonged period of stagnation in anti-corruption outcomes. The country’s best performance on the index was recorded in 2014, when it scored 48. Since then, scores declined steadily until 2018, when public optimism following a change in government contributed to a modest recovery from 40 in 2017 to 41 in both 2018 and 2019. That momentum has since plateaued.
Transparency International attributed Ghana’s performance to deeper governance challenges rather than isolated failures. According to the organisation, countries that achieve sustained improvements on the CPI typically benefit from consistent political leadership, strong regulators, and comprehensive legal and institutional reforms. In contrast, countries with persistently low or declining scores often exhibit weakened democratic checks and balances, politicised justice systems, undue political influence, and shrinking civic space.
The organisation further observed that full democracies tend to record higher CPI scores, while non-democratic systems perform the worst, underscoring the close link between democratic governance and effective corruption control.
Despite some efforts in 2025 to enhance transparency in corruption investigations and prosecutions, including actions by the Office of the Special Prosecutor and high-profile institutional developments, Transparency International Ghana concluded that these steps have not translated into meaningful improvements in perception or outcomes.
The findings suggest that Ghana’s anti-corruption framework continues to suffer from implementation gaps and institutional weaknesses, raising concerns about the country’s ability to reverse its long-term downward trend without deeper structural reforms.
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