The Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) has intensified its nationwide crusade to rally stakeholders behind a comprehensive law to regulate political party and campaign financing, as the cost of doing politics in Ghana reaches alarming levels.
As part of the advocacy drive, the Center on Wednesday, September 2, 2026, organized a Media Workshop on Regulating Political Party Financing in Ghana in Kumasi. The Kumasi workshop is the latest in a series of regional engagements, following similar sessions held in Greater Accra on August 24, Northern Region on August 27, and Bono Region on August 31, 2026.
The workshop, held under the theme “The State of Political Finance in Ghana”, brought together selected journalists from print, broadcast and online media houses to interrogate the current political financing regime and build consensus for urgent reforms.
The day-long engagement featured expert presentations on the state of political parties and campaign financing, followed by robust interactive discussions and question-and-answer sessions on gaps in the existing legal and regulatory framework and the proposed Model Law.
According to organizers, the regional workshops have provided CDD-Ghana with a strategic platform to share its Draft Model Political Finance Law and solicit critical inputs from stakeholders, including the media, to enrich the document.
It would be recalled that with support from the British High Commission, CDD-Ghana has developed a draft Model Political Finance Law aimed at strengthening transparency, accountability and fairness in the financing of political parties and election campaigns in Ghana.
Addressing participants, the Director of Programmes and Operations at CDD-Ghana, Mr. Freddy Adu Gyamfi, said the Center has over the past months engaged political parties, civil society organisations, the private sector, university students, youth groups and other interest groups across the country to build broad-based support for the reforms.
He noted that recognizing the critical role of the media as agenda setters and watchdogs in promoting transparency and accountability, CDD-Ghana found it imperative to equip journalists with deeper understanding of the current state of political financing.
“The media is a key partner in this reform process. We want to provide journalists with an overview of the challenges and gaps in our political finance architecture and how the Model Law seeks to address them,” he said.
The workshop also exposed participants to government’s position on the Constitutional Review Commission (CRC) recommendations on political financing.
Speaking in an interview after the workshop, the Programme Officer for Elections at CDD-Ghana, Mr. Joseph Oti Frimpong, painted a grim picture of the rising cost of politics in the country, describing the situation as unsustainable.
Citing empirical studies conducted by the Center, he disclosed that the cost of contesting parliamentary elections has multiplied astronomically over the past decade.
“Per our studies on monetisation and high cost of politics, a parliamentary candidate needed approximately GHC124,000 to contest in 2012. That figure increased to GHC235,000 in 2016 and jumped to about GHC4 million in the 2020 elections,” he revealed.
For the presidential contest, he said candidates spent an estimated GHC579 million in the 2020 general elections alone.
Mr. Frimpong said although CDD-Ghana is yet to conduct its assessment for the 2024 elections, all indications point to a further increase, a development that has become a major concern for many Ghanaians.
“We are asking where political parties and candidates get the resources from and how they spend it. We think there should be state regulation to cut down the high cost of political finance before it gets out of hand,” he stressed.
He also bemoaned the ever-increasing filing fees charged by political parties. According to him, in 2016 the NPP charged GHC85,000 while the NDC charged GHC60,000. In 2020, the NPP’s fee rose to GHC220,000 with the NDC charging GHC420,000. By 2024, the figures had shot up to GHC350,000 for the NPP and GHC530,000 for the NDC.
He observed a worrying trend where parties in government tend to charge lower filing fees, a situation that raises suspicion of abuse of state resources to finance party activities.
“The problem here is the abuse of incumbency. Other challenges include vote buying and vote selling, demand and supply driven corruption, unregulated financing of candidates and abuse of state resources,” he noted.
Mr. Frimpong said sources of political funding in Ghana include both licit and illicit donations from institutions and individuals, nomination fees, kickbacks and corruption, fundraising activities, membership dues and proceeds from primaries.
On cost drivers, he listed maintenance of serial callers, spending on weddings, funerals, Christmas donations, payment of school fees and hospital bills, honouring invitations from churches and shrines, as well as vehicles and fuel.
He cited the Member of Parliament for Walewale, Abdul Kabiru Mahama, who reportedly disclosed that he spends not less than GHC30,000 on funerals every month, and urged the public to manage their expectations from MPs.
Touching on gaps and challenges in Ghana’s political finance architecture, he said the country has no campaign financing regulation, no legally defined campaign period, no ceiling or limits on contributions and spending, no mandatory verification of identity of donors or disclosure of donors, no constitutional requirement for publication of party accounts and weak enforcement and sanctions regime.
Others include the fact that the prohibition on receiving funding from non-citizens applies to political parties and not candidates, no prohibition on abuse of state resources and incumbency, and no mixed model of state and private funding.
To address these gaps, CDD-Ghana is proposing a raft of reforms, including a legally defined campaign period of about 120 days, mandatory submission of financial reports by candidates detailing contributions and donations received, and placing a ceiling on how much an individual or organisation can contribute to prevent state capture.
Other proposals include strengthening the Electoral Management Body or establishing a new independent body to effectively regulate political finance; adopting a mixed model of private and state funding; conditioning state funding on promotion of participation of marginalised groups such as women, youth and persons with disabilities; requiring verification of donor identity and disclosure of donors above a stipulated threshold; and expressly prohibiting financing from illicit and unlawful sources.
The Center is also calling for proper regulation of overseas fundraising events to enable verification of donor identity, prohibition of foreign funding, regulation of filing fees and intra-party election costs to address monetisation, and amendment of current law to extend criminalisation of vote buying in national elections and referendums to intra-party elections.
Mr. Frimpong emphasized that the high cost of politics is not only a concern for CDD-Ghana but for majority of Ghanaians, and urged the media to lend its voice to the current consensus on reforms.
He outlined the consensus as captured by the Constitutional Review Committee (CRC) to include establishment of an Independent Registrar and Regulator of Political Parties and Campaigns (IRRPC) with powers to register, regulate and sanction political parties, criminalisation of vote buying, restriction of campaign period to 120 days, regulation of campaign receipts and expenditure, regulation of filing fees, external audit of party and candidate funding, sanctioning of abuse of incumbency including criminal prosecution, establishment of a Democracy Fund for public funding, and allowing all members in good standing to elect parliamentary candidates and flagbearers.
