Päivi Lujala, Christa Brunnschweiler, and Ishmael Edjekumhene (2019).
This policy brief reports the findings from a large-scale survey of Ghanaians’ level and sources of information on resource revenue management. The Government of Ghana puts strong emphasis on making natural resource revenue-related information public, particularly when it comes to petroleum revenues. Have the policies been successful? An analysis of a national survey of over 3500 participants finds that Ghanaians overwhelmingly feel that they have the right to receive information about and to benefit from natural resource revenues. However, they lack access to this information. Moreover, the available information about natural resource revenues is most likely to reach those who are already in a better socio-economic position. In other words, transparency exists, but only nominally, because most people are not actually getting information on natural resource revenue management.