The growth of Ghana’s photovoltaic industry presents an important opportunity to expand renewable energy access while supporting industrial development, decent work, and gender equity. However, Ghana currently imports most of the technologies and components used in its growing solar market. Domestic firms remain concentrated in installation, distribution, retail, maintenance, and other downstream services.
This case study examines what would need to change for Ghana’s solar photovoltaic industry to contribute to an inclusive and just energy transition. It analyses where value is created and captured, the quality of employment being generated, the barriers affecting women’s participation, and the industrial policies needed to build domestic manufacturing capabilities.
By the end of 2023, Ghana had installed approximately 81 megawatts of solar capacity. Although this fell below the Renewable Energy Master Plan’s initial milestone, the commercial and industrial solar market is projected to grow rapidly through 2031. Ghana has also adopted ambitious renewable energy and local-content targets, including a target of between 80% and 90% local participation in solar PV manufacturing.
In practice, however, local-content targets have not been effectively communicated, monitored, or enforced. Ghana’s solar PV import bill almost doubled between 2018 and 2023. As demand has grown, a large share of the value associated with the industry has continued to flow out of the country rather than supporting domestic manufacturing, skills, employment, and technological development.
Ghana’s position in the solar production network
The solar PV production network includes three broad stages. Manufacturing covers silicon extraction, polysilicon refining, wafer and cell production, and module assembly. Deployment and use include sales, system design, installation, operations, and maintenance. The end-of-life stage involves decommissioning, recycling, and the recovery of valuable materials.
The Ghana solar PV industry is concentrated in the deployment and use stage. Ghanaian companies primarily import components and provide system design, installation, maintenance, and retail services. Manufacturing of solar cells, modules, inverters, and other core components remains minimal.
Global solar manufacturing is highly concentrated. Chinese firms benefit from economies of scale, vertically integrated supply chains, significant technological capabilities, and state-backed financing. These advantages allow imported modules to be sold at prices that new Ghanaian manufacturers and assemblers struggle to match.
This does not mean that localisation is impossible. Ghana already has some of the industrial capabilities needed to produce solar modules and balance-of-system components. These include aluminium production in Tema, cable manufacturing, relevant mineral deposits, engineering capabilities, and nascent module-assembly initiatives.
The case study finds that only 12.5% of surveyed firms reported undertaking any manufacturing or assembly. Nearly half reported that local SMMEs played no role in manufacturing solar PV components. This highlights both the limited depth of current localisation and the opportunity to expand domestic production.
Employment potential and job quality
Developing a domestic manufacturing base could create significantly more employment and retain more value within Ghana. Solar-panel production is estimated to generate approximately 1,970 full-time equivalent jobs for every gigawatt of production capacity—more than five times the labour intensity of inverter production.
Ghana’s renewable energy plans contain ambitious employment targets. The Renewable Energy Master Plan anticipates 220,000 jobs from renewable energy development, while the National Energy Transition Investment Plan projects 400,000 net new jobs, most of them linked to solar PV and electric-vehicle charging infrastructure.
These targets will be difficult to achieve through an industry focused mainly on importing and installing equipment. Installation work is often temporary, project-based, and dependent on irregular procurement cycles. Workers may be employed for the duration of a project and released when it ends.
The study finds that employment in the sector is predominantly short-term and contract-driven, with limited access to social protection and uneven enforcement of labour standards. This is particularly concerning for subcontracted and informal workers.
Expanding long-term operations, maintenance, manufacturing, recycling, and material-recovery activities could create more stable employment. However, localisation must be connected to enforceable labour protections if it is to produce genuinely decent work.
Barriers to local manufacturing
Access to suitable finance is one of the most significant barriers facing the Ghana solar PV industry. Manufacturing requires patient capital with longer repayment periods, while domestic credit is often expensive and short-term. Development finance has also focused largely on deploying solar infrastructure rather than supporting domestic production.
Fiscal policy creates a further obstacle. Tax and duty arrangements that favour finished imported products can make local assembly less competitive. Domestic manufacturers may pay duties on imported inputs while competing with finished products that enter the country under favourable exemptions.
Policy implementation is also weak. Although Ghana has ambitious local-content regulations, most firms surveyed were either unaware of the targets or regarded the policy framework as ineffective. Without measurable targets, effective monitoring, and meaningful enforcement, localisation commitments remain largely aspirational.
Skills are another constraint. Technical and vocational education and training have focused mainly on installation. Manufacturing requires additional capabilities in precision assembly, quality assurance, production management, testing, standards compliance, and recycling technology.
Foreign companies are not generally required to transfer technology, develop local suppliers, or contribute systematically to skills development. Ghana’s growing market could provide leverage to negotiate joint ventures, technology transfer, supplier development, and training commitments as conditions for access to public contracts, power-purchase agreements, and concessional finance.
Gender equity in the solar industry
Women account for approximately 21% of energy-sector employment in Ghana and remain significantly underrepresented in technical, managerial, and field-based solar roles.
Their exclusion is reinforced by informal recruitment through male-dominated professional networks, assumptions that installation and rooftop work are masculine, and training systems that do not actively create pathways for women into technical occupations.
Women also perform approximately 3.4 times more unpaid domestic and care work than men. Responsibilities such as childcare, cooking, water collection, and caring for family members reduce the time available for training, travel, fieldwork, and employment with irregular working hours.
Only 13% of surveyed firms had a formal gender policy. Gender initiatives were often dependent on short-term donor funding rather than embedded in companies’ normal operations.
The study calls for measurable gender-equity conditions in sector licences, procurement processes, and financing agreements. It also recommends gender-targeted technical training, safer and more supportive workplaces, and systematic collection of gender-disaggregated employment data.
Opportunities for localisation
Ghana can capture more value from solar expansion by developing local module assembly and manufacturing balance-of-system components such as mounting frames, cables, and packaging. These activities can draw on existing industrial capabilities while providing a pathway towards more advanced manufacturing.
Public procurement could provide an anchor market for domestic producers. Government-funded solar projects, including electrification of public facilities and rural-access programmes, could require minimum levels of local sourcing. Procurement eligibility could also be linked to labour standards, gender-equity practices, and supplier-development commitments.
Long-term operations and maintenance offer another opportunity. Ghanaian firms have developed expertise in system design, project delivery, and technical problem-solving. Expanding these capabilities could support more stable employment while creating a bridge towards production, testing, and quality assurance.
Solar-panel recycling and material recovery could become an important source of future employment and industrial activity. End-of-life panels contain recoverable materials, including silver, copper, aluminium, and silicon. Building formal and properly regulated recycling infrastructure early would allow Ghana to capture this value while preventing solar waste from entering unsafe, informal waste streams.
Regional markets could strengthen the commercial case for localisation. The African Continental Free Trade Area provides opportunities to export assembled modules, balance-of-system components, and locally produced materials to West African markets.
Policies for an inclusive solar transition
The study recommends requiring local content across government-funded solar projects and redesigning import duties to support domestic assembly. It also calls for government-backed credit guarantees, blended finance, and working-capital facilities designed around manufacturing investment cycles.
Technical and vocational curricula should incorporate manufacturing, quality assurance, production management, and recycling. Structured partnerships between industry and educational institutions should include targeted pathways for women.
Future power-purchase agreements and large-scale solar contracts should contain enforceable technology-transfer, joint-venture, and supplier-development requirements. Local-content targets should be time-bound, measurable, publicly tracked, and communicated directly to licensed firms.
Finally, government needs a cross-ministerial mechanism capable of coordinating renewable energy deployment, industrial policy, SMME development, labour standards, skills, and gender inclusion.
The future of the Ghana solar PV industry should not be measured only by the amount of capacity installed. It should also be judged by who creates and captures the value generated, whether workers have secure and protected employment, whether women can participate equitably, and whether solar expansion builds lasting domestic capabilities.