A Senior Lecturer at the University of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA), Dr. Timothy Kwabla Zilevu, has argued that Ghana’s repeated failures in pro-poor policy delivery stem directly from the exclusion of marginalised communities from the policy design process and from the use of flawed data to guide decision-making.
Dr. Zilevu made the remarks while presenting at a workshop organised by the Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) in Accra as part of the I Am Aware initiative, a non-partisan citizen empowerment campaign that uses district-level data to strengthen civic participation and social accountability across the country. The two-day workshop brought together participants from seven districts including La Nkwantanang-Madina Municipal, Kwaebibirem Municipal, Ekumfi, Gomoa West, Kadjebi, Adaklu and Shama.
Sessions covered pro-poor, gender and disability-responsive policy analysis, ethical data collection, evidence-based social accountability, local governance and citizen participation, media engagement for social change, coalition building and advocacy strategy. Participants also received training in using artificial intelligence (AI) tools and simplified technical data to develop compelling public interest stories.
Dr. Zilevu said inaccurate and biased data had been one of the most consistent drivers of poor policy outcomes across key development sectors. “Many policies fail because of loopholes created by inaccurate data,” he said, adding that those responsible for collecting data on behalf of government institutions and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) must be held to higher accountability standards to protect the integrity of the information feeding into national planning.
He also warned that data gathered ostensibly to support vulnerable populations had in some cases been misused to justify budget cuts, to document need without directing resources, or to deny legitimate claims by affected communities.
To reverse these patterns, Dr. Zilevu urged communities and civil society organisations to actively verify whether benefits from government programmes were reaching their intended recipients and to demand documented evidence of performance from oversight institutions. He called for the deliberate inclusion of persons with disabilities and other marginalised groups in the design of data collection tools and research frameworks, arguing that without their direct input, policies would continue to miss the realities they were intended to address.
