Afr.j.polit. sci. (2001) Vol. 6, No. 1,1-41 
Civil Service Reform in Ghana: 
A Case Study of Contemporary Reform 
Problems in Africa 
Joseph R. A. Ayee* 
Abstract 
Among the factors determining the success or failure in Civil Service Reform (CSR) 
are high level political administrative commitment; and the motivation and involvement 
of civil servants themselves in a bureaucratic system that is too weak to 
impose central top-down reform. The article evaluates Ghana's Civil Service 
Reform Programme (CSRP), which was intended to make the civil service a "value 
for money " institution. It is argued that this objective was not achieved because of 
the absence of the factors mentioned above that ensure success. Hence the Civil 
Service Performance Improvement Programme (CSPIP) in March 1995 whichwas 
intended to make the civil service and all its constituent institutions more efficient. 
The article then relates the Ghanaian experience so far to recent developments at 
the level of theory, and their implications for other CSR programmes in Africa. 
Introduction 
With the emergence of the modern state, the civil service in developing countries 
evolved not only to formulate policies but also to effectively implement them. In 
other words, the civil service is often associated with the effective and efficient 
management of development policies and programmes. In this connection, it is seen 
as the main, but not the only, instrument by which development activities in 
developing countries are implemented (Esman, 1988: 132). Consequently, civil 
service reform programmes, supported by donors, such as the World Bank and 
International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the British Overseas Development Administration 
(ODA), have emphasized questions of organizational structure, financial 
and human resource needs, and basic administrative competence appropriate to the 
performance of the development function (Dwivedi, 1989; ODA, 1989; Wunsch, 
1027-0353 O 2001 African Association of Political Science
2 Joseph R. A. Ayee 
1991; UN, 1992). Such programmes increasingly occur in the context of structural 
adjustment together with an extensive reduction of the size of the public sector. 
Using Ghana as a case study, this article seeks to outline the context of the Civil 
Service Reform Programme (CSRP) in Ghana, review its rationale, and analyse the 
progress so far made, given the obstacles and constraints. The analysis is based on 
five key components of the reform programme; namely, (i) control of the size of the 
civil service; (ii) pay and grading; (iii) organization and management reform; (iv) 
the management of retrenchment; and (v) training. The article also examines the 
Civil Service Performance Improvement Programme (CSPIP) introduced in March 
1995 to replace the CSRP. The implications of the article for other African countries 
are then considered. 
Background to the Civil Service Reform Programme (CSRP) 
The Ghana Civil Service has been variously described as "the finest, most relevant 
and performance-oriented institution in Africa" and as "a moribund, paper-pushing 
institution" (Nti, 1978). These contrasting descriptions show that the civil service 
has experienced both good days and bad times and that it is a reflection of the state 
of the Ghanaian economy during different periods. 
The good days of the civil service generally cover the period immediately before 
independence in 1957 to the mid-1970s when civil servants, on whose shoulder the 
machinery of government essentially revolves, appear to have been well-trained, 
and adequately remunerated and resourced. At the same time the size of the service 
was "manageable" and security of tenure as well as the anonymity and neutrality of 
civil servants were guaranteed. All these factors combined to produce an environment 
which was congenial and thus elicited in most civil servants the highest degree of 
performance and productivity. The national economy, during this time, had not 
suffered the battering it was to receive later. The economy and society were seen to 
embody characteristics that were considered advantageous for modern economic 
development (Price, 1983). Ghana was not only the world's largest producer of 
cocoa but also possessed an imposing array of mineral resources, including gold, 
diamonds, manganese and bauxite. The country had one of the highest per capita 
incomes in sub-Saharan Africa, physical infrastructure as well as a competent civil 
service and a rich store of well-educated and professionally experienced people 
(Chazan, 1983; Rimmer, 1989). These strengths partly explain the worldwide 
euphoria that greeted Ghana's independence in 1957 andthecountry was seen as the 
torchbearer of the African continent. 
The bad times of the civil service on the other hand, seem to have coincided with 
the period of economic stagnation and decline. From 1974 to the early 1980s, the 
Ghanaian economy was in decline, unable, for a combination of structural and 
policy-based reasons, to seize the initiative and overcome the constraints on choice 
(Rothchild, 1991). Declining agricultural and industrial productivity, in some cases
Civil Service Reform in Ghana 3 
despite rising international market prices, contributed substantially to the country's 
economic malaise during the 1970s and 1980s. Thus, diamond, manganese, and 
bauxite exports fell heavily in this period, and even though the output of gold 
dropped from 15,973 grams in 1975 to 10,764 grams in 1981, the value of export in 
the Ghanaian currency, the cedi, rose impressively as a consequence of higher 
world market prices (Price, 1983; Ahiakpor, 1985). Cocoa exports, which normally 
accounted for 60% of foreign exchange revenues, did poorly in these years. It 
plummeted from a high of 557,000 long tons in 1964/65 crop year to 185,000 in 
1980/81, resulting in a net deficit in the budget in 1981 and 1982 (Rothchild, 1991; 
Herbst, 1993). Between 1970 and 1980, moreover, Ghana's share of world cocoa 
exports fell from 33 to 17 per cent (Herbst, 1993). Declining productivity was partly 
attributable to policy failures and bureaucratic mismanagement. Overstaffed and 
inefficient state enterprises, poor infrastructure, low producer prices, overpricing of 
the local currency, budgetary imbalances, skewed sectoral and regional allocations, 
inadequate agricultural research, ineffective disease control, a declining quality in 
extension services, drought and international constraints, all played a part in the fall 
in the production of minerals, manufactured goods, and food and cash crops. In 
short, by December 1981, when Rawlings' s PNDC assumed power through acoup 
d'etat, the Ghanaian economy was indeed in dire straits (Chazan, 1983; Rothchild, 
1991; Herbst, 1993). 
The period 1975-1981 witnessed several debilitating features in the civil 
service (see Box 1 overleaf). 
By 1981, the debilitating features had not only constrained the capacity of the 
civil service for implementing developmentpolicies and programmesof governments 
and its responsibility for economic and public resource management, but had also 
adversely affected morale and performance resulting in low productivity. In a 
nutshell then, the civil service that existed in Ghana before the introduction of the 
PNDC's Civil Service Reform Programme (CSRP) was in a sore state and seemed 
inadequate and unprepared to shoulder the implementation of the Economic 
Recovery Programme (ERP) and the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) that 
were articulated in the 1980s (Nkrumah, 1992). This point has been amplified by 
Davis (1990:7): 
As the pace of economic reform accelerated in the first phase of the ERP the 
difficulties of translating policy into programmes capable of implementation- 
—a critical function of the civil service—became increasingly a source of 
frustration and a real threat to the Government's capacity to sustain the 
reform effort. 
Before 1987, some attempts at restructuring the civil service were made. 
Notable among these were the Mills-Odoi Commission on the Structure and 
Remuneration of the Public Service, 1967, and the Okoh Commission on the 
Structure and Procedures of the Civil Service, 1974. Taken together these two 
commission reports provide adetailed model of civil service reform that both marks
4 Joseph R. A. Ayee 
Box 1: Debilitating Features of Ghana's Civil Service 
(a) Substantial overstaffing, especially at junior levels—lack of manpower 
planning; 
(b) Determination of real salaries/wages plus a high degree of wage 
compression; 
(c) Lack of morale/motivation-incentives problems; 
(d) Inability of major institutions involved in civil service management to 
provide policy guidance, direction and supervision to sectoral/departmental 
units—defective managerial competence; 
(e) Over-centralization and over-concentration of powers and functions at 
the national level; 
(f) Poorphysicalworkenvironmentandpoorfacilities—logistical problems; 
(g) Excessive bureaucratization and red tape (e.g., of promotions and 
appointments to key posts); 
(h) Lack of political direction and commitment leading to apathy and 
inertia; 
(i) Serious deficiencies in training institutions and programmes; 
(j) Obsolete and rigid rules and regulations resulting from an outdated Civil 
Service Act; 
(k) Uncontrolled recruitment, particularly in the non-critical occupational 
grades, into the civil service, leading to an undesirable expansion in its size; 
(1) Grossly inadequate low wages and narrow increment differentials, 
leading to the migration of competent staff to employment zones paying 
convertible currency; 
(m) Acute understaffing in the senior and professional grades caused by the 
brain-drain; 
(n) Inadequate legislative framework to support operations and functions 
of the civil service; 
(o) Declining resources and imbalance between salary and non-wage 
outlays; 
(p) Questionable security of tenure, anonymity and neutrality. 
aturningpointinGhana'sadministrativeexperiments and serve asareference point 
for civil service reforms to the present time. The recommendations of the two 
commissions, which seem similar are that: 
(i) ministerial organizations should be restructured to concentrate on 
sectorpolicy planning, co-ordination, monitoring and evaluation functions 
of government and be divested of implementation activities; and 
(ii) responsibilities for the implementation of government approved programmes 
be given to decentralized implementation agencies reporting 
to their political heads of the regional organizations (Ayee, 1991). 
The Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) 
which emerged from the Institute of Public Administration (IPA) was the direct 
outcome of the work of the Mills-Odoi Commission in 1967. The subsequent
Civil Service Reform in Ghana 5 
exercises in management training promoted the training of personnel in the public 
services, equipping them with improved management techniques and skills for 
changes envisaged in the organization structures and the new content of work in the 
public services. Also, the exercise in efficient national financial management was 
backed with changes in the financial regulations (Eghan et al., 1990). One significant 
recommendation of the Okoh Commission, on the other hand, was the creation of 
the Office Head of the Civil Service (OHCS) in 1979 by merging three institutions, 
viz., the Establishment Secretariat, the Management Services Division (known 
previously as the Office of Government Machinery) and the Establishment Unit of 
the Office of the President. Some of the other recommendations of the Okoh 
Commission were implemented within the framework of the Economic and Rural 
Development Management Project with the assistance of the United States Agency 
for International Development (US AID) between 1977-1978. The project carried 
out detailed resource mapping of most of the then existing 65 districts in Ghana, 
developed an operational level teaching of programme and budget management at 
the district level, and indeed, trained some 3,000 public servants at various levels in 
management (Eghan et al., 1990). 
Despite the work of the Mills-Odoi and Okoh Commissions on the Ghana civil 
service, the organizational structure and management practices of each ministry 
remained essentially unchanged. What changed, for example, was the number of 
departments and programmes which formed jfart of the civil service, and the 
departments reclassified as parastatals (Obeng-Adofo, 1991). The problems of the 
implementation of the reforms stem partly from the lack of leadership and 
commitment to reform by both politicians and civil servants. For instance, in spite 
of the formal processing of some of the recommendations of the Mills-Odoi 
Commission in the Local Administration Act, 1971, Act 359, the government of the 
Progress Party under Prime Minister Busia recognized its own deficiency in 
political capital and decided to withhold some of the powers required to be 
transferred to the lower-level organizations. The Act also reserved to the Prime 
Minister the appointing authority for chairmen of district councils. 
Political instability was also an obstacle to implementation. For instance, in the 
case of the Okoh Commission, an implementation committee, which included the 
Head of the Civil Service' and a Deputy Director of GIMPA, drew up a programme. 
for implementation, including the publication of a revised Civil Service Act, and 
Rules and Regulations. The then government of President Hilla Limann was ousted 
in December 1981 before the programme could take off (Eghan et al., 1991). 
Moreover, there was a general over-reliance on structures and resources in reform 
proposals and the consequent inadequate attention by the reform commissions to 
the processes of management (Ayee, 1993). 
In April 1982, the PNDC government established the Kaku Kyiamah Committee 
on the Restructuring of the Civil Service Machinery with Particular Reference to the 
Role of the Principal Secretary and his Functional Relationship with other Technical 
Personnel within the Ministry. It also set up the Sackey Committee on the Re-
6 Joseph R. A. Ayee 
sm.cturingofMinisterialOrganizationsinAugustl982Twoothercommittees,the 
AnTaAsamoah Committee on the Decentralization ofNational Administration and 
AeSowuCommitteeontheFormulationofContentofSocio-EconomicDevelopment 
Programmes for Decentralized National Administration were also appointed in 
September 1982. The three committees were, however, merged in September/ 
October 1983 toformthePubUcAdniinistrationandDecenttalizationln^lenientation 
Committee (PARDIC)tolookatall the earlier reform efforts and oversee the implementation 
of the ministerial restructuring and decentralization programme, as they 
hadrecommended-PARDIC failed to perform the tasks assigned to it due to limited 
logistics, diminutiveness in administrative reform technology, rapid turnover of 
PARDIC leadership, institutional formlessness, bureaucratic and political sabotage 
(Nkrumah, 1991). . . 
It must be noted that all the commissions and committees since 1967 recommended 
not only structural reorganization and improved conditions of service for 
the civil service but also the decentralization of the machinery of government. 
These recommendations were, however, not implemented mainly because of lack 
of commitment on the part of both politicians and bureaucrats, their over-ambitious 
nature, the numerous institutions with differing perspectives involved in implementing 
them and political instability (Ayee, 1993). 
The somewhat negative attitude of succeeding governments towards the civil 
service has also been cited as one of the reasons that contributed to the "bad times" 
of the civil service. Succeeding governments often doubted the capacity of the civil 
service to implement policies and programmes largely because of the perception 
that it lacked the commitment and political direction, it was over-bureaucratized, 
rigid, inflexible and corrupt. For instance, in his famous Dawn Broadcast of 1961, 
Dr Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's first president, inveighed against the civil service: 
It amazes me that up to the present many civil servants do not realize that we 
are living in a revolutionary era. This Ghana, which has lost so much time 
serving colonial masters, cannot afford to be tied down to archaic snail-pace 
methods of work which obstruct expeditious progress. ... civil servants, 
therefore, must develop a new orientation, a sense of mission and urgency, to 
enable them to eliminate all tendencies towards red tapeism, bureaucracy 
and waste. Civil servants must use their initiative to make the civil service an 
effective instrument in the rapid development of Ghana (Nkrumah, 1961a* 
5). 
Again, Dr Nkrumah demanded that senior civil servants should either "be loyal to 
the State, painstaking and devoted to the cause of Ghana and Africa" or face 
dismissal "even if by so doing we suffer some temporary dislocation of the civil 
service" (Nkrumah, 1961b: 172-173; Nkrumah, 1962:7). 
The National Liberation Council (NLC) government, which ruled Ghana from 
1966-1969, also deplored the tardiness of the civil service and its lack of a sense of 
urgency in the implementation of public policies. For instance, Lt. Gen. E. K. 
Kotoka, akey member of the NLC, complained that "things don't go as expected in
Civil Service Reform in Ghana 7 
the civil service". Lt. Gen. Ocran, another member of the NLC, also complained that 
in his ministries, unlike the army, the line of authority was ill-defined and diffused 
and civil servants often did not know who was responsible for what ^egon 
Observer, 1967; Pinkney, 1972). 
The Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) government, which took 
overpower in December 1981, blamed the civil service for not only sabotaging its 
policies and footdragging but also regarded the top echelons of the service as "allies 
of imperialism and neo-colonialism which should be subjected to revolutionary 
overthrow and not mere reforms" (Ghana, 1982:5-6). In the opinion of the PNDC, 
the civil service should be reorganized and politicized to ensure that its "orientation 
tallies with the objectives of the Revolution" (Ghana, 1982:5). 
The impatience which succeeding governments had with the civil service may 
be attributed to the fact that the service was seen as the main vehicle for promoting 
socioeconomic programmes, which all governments unsuccessfully tried to 
implement. The vagueness of some of the policies of governments may itself help 
explain why the governments complained of bureaucratic sabotage and tardiness in 
the implementation of public policies andprogrammes. The governments themselves 
failed to clearly spell out what their policies were, and civil servants had to spend 
much time in deciding which policies appeared to be the most suitable. Even when 
the aims of the policies were clear, the difficulties in achieving them were not 
always understood by the governments (Pinkney, 1972). 
The Civil Service Reform Programme (CSRP), 1987-1993 
The Civil Service Reform Programme (CSRP) was commissioned in 1987 to 
eliminate the constraints which had impeded the civil service's ability to function as 
an agent of progress and change. The CSRP was a component of the Structural 
AdjustmentProgramme's (SAP) publicsector management improvement exercise. 
The SAP, which was begun in April 1983 entailed economic measures such as trade 
liberalization, subsidy withdrawal, currency devaluation, job retrenchment and a 
reduction in parastatal activity. These measures were meant, among other things, to 
stimulate production (especially of exports), discourage rent-seeking behaviour, 
correct budgetary and balance-of-payment problems, penalize the urban middleand 
working-classes—the very social groups that have tended to dominate the 
governing coalitions of post-colonial states. The CSRP was also seen as crucial to 
the government's plans for "orderly and effective" decentralization to the regions 
and districts. It was jointly funded by the Overseas Development Administration 
(ODA) of the United Kingdom and the World Bank (under its Structural Adjustment 
Institutional Support (SAIS) project and later (from mid-1991) under the 
Economic Management Support (EDM) project) by way of logistics backup. 
Messrs Coopers and Lybrand Deloitte and the Royal Institute of Public Administration 
(RIPA) of the United Kingdom undertook the consultancy aspect of the reform. 
Phase I of the CSRP started in July 1987 and ended in June 1988. It identified 
problems peculiar to the civil service and designed the means of achieving specific
8 Joseph R. A. Ayee 
objectives within the context of SAP. Between July 1988 and May 1989, there was 
a Continuation or Bridging Project to maintain the continuity of the programme 
while waiting for the commencement of Phase II, which was to coincide with SAP 
II. Phase II of the CSRP, that is, the implementation phase, based on the diagnostic 
and design work outlined above, started in June 1989 and lasted for four years, up to 
May 1993. 
An Oversight Committee for Civil Service Reforms (OCCSR), chaired by the 
Member/Secretary of the Committee of PNDC Secretaries and the Head of the Civil 
Service that comprised a membership of 12 (against 19 initially) was set up in 1987 
to oversee the work of the consultants and periodically advise and submit 
recommendations on specific aspects of the reforms to the government for approval. 
The Oversight Committee was supported by four sub-divisions which constitute the 
main focus of the reform (see Box 2). 
Box 2: Sub-Divisions of Civil Service Oversight Committee 
(a) Salary Administration and Incomes Policy Division, headed by the 
Executive Director of the Prices and Incomes Board (PIB); 
(b) Management Services Division, headed by the Executive Secretary; 
(c) Personnel Policy and Management Division, head by its Director; and 
(d) Training and Manpower Development Division, headed by its Director. 
The sub-divisions which dealt directly with the ODA Consultancy Team, studied 
and examined the consultant's reports and proposals and submitted recommendations 
to the OCCSR for consideration. Where and when any of these recommendations 
merited the attention of the Committee of Secretaries, appropriate memoranda were 
submitted for the Committee's approval. 
Objectives of the CSRP 
The overall objective of the CSRP was to restructure the civil service in such a way 
as to make it more productive, effective and efficient, and strengthen its capacity for 
the implementation of development programmes. In other words, the CSRP was to 
contribute to improving the management of resources in the public sector. This is 
consistent with Civil Service Reform (CSR) elsewhere in Africa, whose purpose is 
fo—
improve the effectiveness and performance of the civil service and to ensure 
its affordability and sustainability over time. The ultimate goal is to raise the 
quality of public services delivered to the population and to enhance the 
capacity to carry out core government functions. This is essential to promote 
sustained economic and social development (Wescott, 1999: 146). 
The achievement of this objective was based on a number of human resource 
development and manpower planning strategies (see Box 3).
Civil Service Reform in Ghana 9 
Box 3: Strategies of Civil Service Reform Based on Human Resource 
Development and Manpower Planning 
(a) Further rationalization of the pay structure to provide incentives for all 
(b) Regrading all civil service posts to allow for improved salary relativities 
(c) Introduction of new schemes of service to retain and reward high calibre 
(d) Work to support decentralization of authority to District Assemblies, 
grades; 
within the system; 
staff; 
including staff, structure, and functions; 
(e) Implementation of job inspection reports, linked with new manpower 
planning and budgeting methods; 
(f) Finalization of new Civil Service legislation to provide a sound legal 
framework for the reform; 
(g) Introduction of a new Performance Appraisal System which sets agreed 
objectives for each office to motivate and assess staff effectively; 
(h) Production, distribution and computerized updating of senior and junior 
staff lists to assist manpower planning; 
(i) Comprehensive analysis of training needs for all classes, with crash 
training programmes in key areas to improve skills from the top down; 
(j) Launching Management Reviews of key ministries and functions to 
achieve improvements in performance and management 
(k) Strengthening the institutional and operational structure of the Office of 
the Head of the Civil Service (OHCS) in order to improve the efficient 
management of the civil service; 
(1) The elimination of overstaffing, mostly in the lower grades, through a 
functional and redeployment review, while recruitment of skilled personnel 
into critical areas is accelerated; 
(m) Improving the competitiveness of civil service pay, particularly at the 
senior staff level, introducing performance incentives, and restructuring 
the grading system to eliminate anomalies, ensure equity in salaries and 
provide a better framework for career development and pay policy 
determination; and 
(n) Improving and strengthening the coordination of training and manpower 
development throughout the civil service. 
Indeed, Phase I of the CSRP consisted of the provision of consultancy services and 
diagnosis in five related and complementary components, namely: 
(a) a review of the civil service personnel management function, including civil 
service legislation; 
(b) civil service salary and grading review;
10 Joseph R. A. Ayee 
(c) a review and strengthening of the Management Services Division of the OHCS; 
(d) functional review and redeployment study; and 
(e) training and staff development review. 
Evaluation of Ghana's CSRP 
Ghana's CSRP was to achieve five objectives; namely: (i) control of the size of the 
civil service; (ii) improved pay and grading; (iii) reform of organization and 
management; (iv) planning and strengthening of training; and (v) management of 
retrenchment or redeployment. To what extent were these objectives achieved? 
See Box 4 and Box 5 (pp. 24-5) for the achievements and limitations of the 
CSRP respectively. 
/. Control of the Size of the Civil Service 
Computerized payroll system of the Controller and Accountant General (CAG) 
indicated that the number of civil servants paid each month (including those in 
extra-ministerial departments) fell from 131,000 in August 1987 to 108,000 in 
March 1992, a decline of 17%. The CSRP, therefore, succeeded in strengthening the 
mechanism for the control of the size of the civil service. This took some time, but 
by 1990 the Manpower Budget Committee set departmental manpower ceilings as 
part of the recurrent budgetary process, and in 1991 the process was repeated and 
refined. Manpower ceilings were included in the budget documents, and the 
Management Services Division (MSD) joined the Budget Improvement Working 
Group in the Ministry of Finance (MOF). In these ways elements of the CSRP 
enabled the Office of the Head of the Civil Service (OHCS) to support the MOF in 
its task of strengthening its budgetary controls, at least as far as personal emoluments 
(which accounted for about two-fifths of recurrent expenditure in 1991) were 
concerned. The effectiveness of this joint process was mainly attributed to the work 
of the MSD in carrying out job inspections and management reviews, which have 
provided what is perceived as a rational basis for setting manpower ceilings, and 
putting the onus on ministries and departments to justify staff levels. More directly, 
the strengthening of the MOF in its budgetary role somehow contributed to the 
general strengthening of its position in the process of expenditure control. 
These achievements notwithstanding, some problems and constraints were 
identified. First, despite the amount of work done to improve the quality of 
information against which changes in the size of the civil service are assessed, the 
inevitable need to use different sources (such as census data and the payroll) and a 
lack of consistency in definitions have led senior civil servants such as chief 
directors and directors to question the accuracy of comparisons that have been made 
at various times. Second, to use the size of the civil service as the indicator for 
controlling the size of the public service is to be too narrow. If a broader definition 
is taken of the public service (including the Ghana Education Service, the fire and 
prison services, the police and the so-called subvented organizations, but excluding