Country profile - GHA

Corruption in Ghana

10 sub-national regions - 1995-2022. Latest country-level SCI: 50.6 (2022).

Grand: 37.1 Petty: 49.8 Latest observed: 2017

Ghana: key corruption facts

The most corrupt region of Ghana is Volta (45.3/100), and the least corrupt is Eastern (55.1/100), on a 0-100 scale where 0 is most corrupt and 100 is least. All 10 regions are ranked below.

  • In 2022, Ghana's national Subnational Corruption Index (SCI) was 50.6/100, on a scale where 0 is the most corrupt and 100 the least corrupt.
  • Most corrupt region: Volta (SCI 45.3/100, 2022).
  • Least corrupt region: Eastern (SCI 55.1/100, 2022).
  • Grand corruption (SGCI): 37.1/100; petty corruption (SPCI): 49.8/100 (last directly observed in 2017).
  • Trend: Ghana's SCI moved from 58.9/100 (1995) to 50.6/100 (2022).
  • Coverage: 10 regions, 1995–2022. Source: Subnational Corruption Database (Crombach & Smits, 2024, Nature Scientific Data), CC BY 4.0.

How Ghana compares: SCD vs. the CPI and World Bank

The Subnational Corruption Index is scored 0–100 on the same orientation as Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index (higher = cleaner). The difference: the CPI and the World Bank measure the perceptions of experts and business executives and report one national number, while the SCI is built from what ordinary households perceive and experience — and it breaks Ghana into 10 regions.

Index Latest Scale Based on
Subnational Corruption Index (SCI) 50.6 0–100 (100 = cleanest) Households — perception & experience
Transparency International CPI 43 0–100 (100 = cleanest) Experts & business surveys
World Bank Control of Corruption 0 ≈ −2.5 to 2.5 Aggregated expert sources

Most recent year — SCI 2022, CPI 2022, CCI 2022. The SCD also publishes region-anchored SUB-CPI and SUB-CCI series so the CPI and World Bank measures can be read at the regional level.

SCI trajectory - 1995-2022

Country-level mean of the Subnational Corruption Index, averaged across all 10 regions. Higher values mean cleaner governance (0 = most corrupt, 100 = least corrupt).

64 48 1995 2022

Source: SCD v1.0 (Comprehensive Dataset). Years where the panel was filled by inter/extrapolation are included in the country mean.

Regions (10)

Each row is a sub-national region with its latest SCI score. Click into any row for the region's full time series.

# Region GDL code Years Latest SCI
1 Volta GHAr104 1995-2022 45.3
2 Upper West GHAr109 1995-2022 46.5
3 Greater Accra GHAr103 1995-2022 49.1
4 Ashanti GHAr106 1995-2022 50.5
5 Northern GHAr108 1995-2022 50.5
6 Brong Ahafo GHAr107 1995-2022 51
7 Central GHAr102 1995-2022 51.5
8 Upper East GHAr110 1995-2022 52.9
9 Western GHAr101 1995-2022 53.7
10 Eastern GHAr105 1995-2022 55.1

Download Ghana

Per-country panel slice in CSV format. Columns: iso, country, gdl, region, year, sci. Direct dataset citations should reference the Figshare deposit (see How to cite).

Download GHA.csv