Sustainable development and the Prosperity gospel
As Ghana nears the end of seven decades of independence from British colonial rule, it is timely to assess the country’s democratic and developmental progress. Regarding democracy, Ghana was long regarded as a rare African success story: an established liberal democracy.
While Ghana is one of only a few of Africa’s 54 countries that can be characterised as a liberal democracy, the country has seen democratic erosion in recent years.
While Ghana’s democracy is somewhat shaky but still intact, the same cannot be said for the country’s progress towards sustainable development. Achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 would involve a colossal national effort to end poverty, protect the environment and climate and ensure that all Ghanaians enjoy peace and prosperity.
The United Nations’ first SDG is to ‘end poverty in all its forms everywhere by 2030. Ghana’s government has set a more modest target: to reduce poverty and inequality by 50 per cent by 2027. This is part of the country’s long-term development plan, which aims to transform Ghana into a middle-income country by 2030.
The government has identified several strategies to achieve this goal, including increasing access to education and healthcare, promoting economic growth and improving infrastructure.
Ghana’s strong economic growth in the 1990s and the 2000s helped reduce national poverty from 52.6 per cent to 21.4 per cent between 1991 and 2012. Since then, progress has stalled. Today, an estimated 24.2 per cent of Ghanaians live below the poverty line.
Ghana ranks 140 out of 189 countries on the Human Development Index of the United Nations Development Programme.
In addition, inequalities between women and men continue to be very high.
Prosperity gospel
How is Ghana doing in protecting the environment?
The scourge of galamsey significantly undermines the government’s attempts to record environmental progress: despite repeated promises from successive governments, little concrete progress seems to be made. How about peace?
Peace in Ghana is by no means assured, as the deadly events in Bawku underline; to date, at least 300 men, women and children have died in the continuing conflict.
Finally, how is Ghana doing in prosperity? During the Fourth Republic, Ghana’s religious landscape was transformed by the growth of Pentecostal-Charismatic churches.
Approximately 71.2 per cent of Ghanaians practise the Christian faith, and of those, around three in ten belong to Pentecostal/Charismatic denominations.
Put another way, around 25 million Ghanaians of the country’s overall population of approximately 35 million people are Christians; of these, about 7.5 million belong to Pentecostal-Charismatic churches.
The prosperity gospel is a central aspect of Pentecostal-Charismatic theology.
According to the Lausanne Movement, an organisation which ‘connects influencers and ideas for global mission’, the prosperity gospel is ‘the teaching that believers have a right to the blessings of health and wealth and that they can obtain these blessings through positive confessions of faith and the “sowing of seeds”, through the faithful payments of tithes and offerings’.
According to an American academic, Mark Hellstern of Oral Roberts University, the prosperity gospel is the ‘notion that a Christian should and can live in perpetual divine health and material abundance and that one should learn to exercise his or her faith to appropriate those blessings’.
Economic growth
What has the prosperity gospel got to do with sustainable development goals in Ghana and the country’s progress towards achieving them?
The prosperity gospel is a great attraction for many Ghanaians – and Africans more widely – in the context of economic disappointment, development pessimism and widespread failure to achieve a desired level of personal prosperity.
Conditions of economic pessimism and stalled development provide an environment where Pentecostal-Charismatic pastors incorporate prosperity messages into their sermons.
The emphasis is on the importance of personal empowerment: it is said to be God’s will that Christians obtain wealth, health and worldly success.
Church expansion in Ghana is a growth industry: in January 2025, there were an estimated 3509 churches, a five per cent increase from 2023.
Nearly two-thirds (2204; 63 per cent) are located in the Greater Accra Region, while the Ashanti Region is home to 780 (22 per cent).
While many churches in Ghana promote prosperity teaching, it is not clear what impact such teaching has on the country’s progress towards sustainable development.
We can, however, note that while the number of churches in Ghana expands, the percentage of those living in poverty remains stubbornly high.
As of 2024, some 6.9 million people in Ghana lived in extreme poverty, with the poverty threshold at 2.15 dollars a day.
This was an increase from 2023 when approximately 6.8 million people lived in poverty. In 2026, around 6.7 million Ghanaians are expected to live on a maximum of 2.15 dollars daily.
Critics claim that the prosperity gospel does little to help Ghana achieve sustainable development goals, including poverty reduction.
Prosperity preaching is said to be hurting Ghana, as its capitalist propensities overwhelm the desire for spiritual growth and moral sanctity towards eternal life.
The economic situation in Ghana today makes everyone yearn for sustained economic progress and developmental improvements.
Like elsewhere in Africa, in Ghana, religion is responsible for the spiritual needs of its adherents.
The mainly Christian population of Ghana encourages many to believe that Christian teachings, including the prosperity gospel, will ensure not only their spiritual but also their economic well-being.
While very persuasive for millions of Ghanaians, prosperity teaching prompts much debate about its influence on Ghana’s religious and socio-economic life, including sustainable development.
The writer is an Emeritus Professor of Politics, London Metropolitan University, UK
sjhayn1@londonmet.ac.uk
