Opportunities and Challenges for Ghana’s Blue Economy

Abstract

Ghana’s emerging blue economy agenda is examined through an access-focused lens centred on Sekondi-Takoradi and nearby Shama. Ghana’s 2025 national consultation on a draft Blue Economy Strategy frames the ocean as a transformative space for jobs, food security and environmental stewardship, supported by proposals for a Blue Economy Commission and new partnerships. The chapter situates these developments within global geopolitical interest and a crowded field of donors, banks and investors, but foregrounds domestic scepticism regarding the distribution of benefits, drawing on critical scholarship linking blue economy agendas to processes of capital accumulation, territorialization and exclusion. Using Ribot and Peluso’s theory of access, it highlights four dimensions: access to capital, material spaces, labour opportunities and discursive access to shape narratives. Ports, oil and coastal infrastructure reconfigure who controls shorelines and seas, often marginalizing small-scale fishers and local tourism initiatives. Through a Value Case Approach, including the personas of a Sekondi fisherman and a Shama ecotourism developer, the chapter highlights overlapping claims, forms of infrastructural violence and differentiated constraints. It concludes that making Ghana’s blue economy genuinely inclusive requires confronting structural inequalities in access and co-creating strategies with local actors.