SYPALA 2026: Gov’t must focus on long-term priorities – Leslie Dwight Mensah

By: Godbless Asaana‎
‎Research Fellow at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), Leslie Dwight Mensah, has identified poor policy choices and weak policy discipline as some of the major factors slowing Africa’s economic development.
‎
‎Speaking at the Students and Young Professionals African Liberty Academy (SYPALA) 2026, organized by the IMANI Center for Policy and Education, Mensah said governments must prioritize policies that create long-term prosperity rather than short-term political gains.
‎
‎“One of the challenges for leaders, okay, is to make good policy choices. You can never take that for granted,” he said.
‎
‎“And the principal work that think tanks, civil society institutions do, really, is to shepherd the government towards making good policy choices,” he added.
‎
‎He further criticized what he described as “wrong policy priorities”, where governments focus on secondary issues instead of investments capable of creating long-term prosperity.
‎
‎“A related factor is wrong policy priorities. Where governments do the secondary things first,” he said.
‎
‎According to him, there has been a growing tendency across Africa, including Ghana, to prioritise welfare programmes and promises of free services over investments that can expand productive capacity and create sustainable wealth.
‎
‎“There’s been a move across Africa; we see it also in Ghana, to put welfare over investments to create prosperity,” Mensah said.
‎
‎“There’s been a preference to promise and do things for free, which elicit short-term political gain, rather than investments that build prosperity for the long term.”
‎
‎He said the problem cannot be attributed to a lack of research or ideas, noting that Africa has produced extensive research and numerous economic blueprints aimed at transforming the continent.
‎
‎“Okay, so, we’re trying to explain why, in the face of millions of pages of published research, in the face of thousands of African intellectuals, in the face of hundreds of economic blueprints to transform Africa’s fortunes, why despite all that, development has been slower than it should be,” he said.
‎
‎Mensah stressed that good policy decisions may not always be popular with citizens in the short term, warning that governments could pursue economically damaging policies and still gain political support.
‎
‎“And we should bear in mind also that the correct policy choice doesn’t always have to be the nicest idea or the idea that makes people happiest at the moment,” he stated.
‎
‎“You can still win an election in politics when your policy choices are poor. So, the best policies do not necessarily make people the happiest among the choices that are available,” he added.
‎
‎He also identified poor implementation as another major challenge, describing it as a lack of “policy discipline”.
‎
‎“Then there’s the issue of policy discipline. And this describes a situation where the enacted policy is good, okay, but it’s not implemented, or it’s poorly implemented, or it’s inconsistently implemented, or it is undermined completely by opposite actions,” he explained.
‎
‎He said Africa’s development challenges therefore require not only sound economic policies but also the political commitment and discipline to implement those policies consistently.
‎
‎Mensah challenged participants to examine the roles of institutions, governance, policy choices, human capital and implementation capacity in determining Africa’s economic performance.
‎
‎The SYPALA 2026 session focused on economic indices and examined why many African countries continue to rank poorly on global economic indicators despite the existence of successful economic models and development blueprints elsewhere.
‎