Big men, small boys, and power in Ghana

Ghana’s recent Constitutional Review Committee (CRC) recommendations focus on strengthening democracy, accountability and governance by proposing significant changes, including banning members of parliament from being ministers, electing metropolitan, municipal and district chief executives, limiting executive power, reforming the judiciary and electoral system, enhancing separation of powers, reducing corruption and modernising the 1992 Constitution for current needs. 

Key proposals include capping the number of ministers, making presidential salaries taxable, allowing independent candidates, ensuring asset declarations for officials and reducing the age of presidential candidates from 40 to 30.

The last-named proposal has occasioned much debate over the festive season.

As of early 2026, no country had a national leader aged 30 or younger.

The youngest current heads of state or government are in their mid-to-late 30s.

They include Ibrahim Traoré (Burkina Faso), aged 34, when he led a successful coup d’état in September 2022; Daniel Noboa (Ecuador), aged 35, and Milojko Spajić (Montenegro), aged 36, when both were first elected president of their countries in 2023. 

Younger politicians do exist in national parliaments (Norway, for instance, has a high percentage of politicians under 30), but holding the highest office of a state or government at such a young age is an extreme exception. Most world leaders are significantly older, with the median age being around 62.

What is the rationale for reducing the age of potential presidents in Ghana from 40 to 30? One argument is that it reflects demographic reality: Ghana is a young country governed mainly by older elites.

Economically and politically, this mismatch matters: youth exclusion is said to fuel disengagement, cynicism and, eventually, instability.

The inference is that if Ghana had a younger president, it would lead to youth engagement, reduce cynicism and, eventually, greater social and political stability.

Counter argument

A counterargument is that reducing the potential age of Ghana’s president to 30 is more about symbolism than practical reality.

What is needed is to increase and enhance the ruler’s integrity, purpose, focus and candour.

Such attributes are not clearly linked to the age of a power holder.

What they are connected to is the quality of a polity’s political institutions. 

In other words, if a leader rules wisely and well, it is not primarily because of his or her age or other personal qualities.

It is chiefly linked to checks and balances, which encourage them to rule via a utilitarian ethic, that is, decisions that aim to maximise and widen happiness and well-being for all.

Ghana is a country where social status, respect and position are based on inherent qualities, including not only age but also family background, gender and social class, rather than on personal achievements or merits.

Ghanaians under the age of 35 or so are widely thought of as ‘small boys’, in contrast to older ‘big men’. 

In his book, Big Men and Small Boys: Power, Ideology and the Burden of History, 1982-1994, Paul Nugent, Professor of Comparative African History, University of Edinburgh, described Ghana’s political power dynamics, where ‘Big Men’ are established, influential figures (including, politicians, military officers and elites more generally) controlling resources and networks, while ‘Small Boys’ are their younger followers, clients or agents, who carry out orders, benefiting from patronage but remaining subordinate, illustrating a system of personalised power where loyalty (often age/kin-based) trumps formal institutions and rule-following.

Tearing down the age wall

So, when it comes to ruling Ghana, what does age have to do with it?

Does someone of 60+ years necessarily have more skills to lead the country than someone in their 30s? 

It is suggested that the most important aspect of why younger Ghanaians are suitably equipped to take positions of power is that many older Ghanaians, specifically those above 60 years, do not have the same level of exposure and, perhaps, skills compared to younger people in their 30s.

It is also suggested that younger talent may have a better approach to integrity and would bring that quality to how they rule.

In other words, so the argument goes, we have to start betting on our young guns and have older people become advisors to the young, not leading them.

We should tear down the age wall, which, unfortunately, has been a shield to and an excuse for those with power who do not want to be challenged.

The debate will go on and it remains to be seen whether either of the two main parties would choose as their presidential candidate someone as young as 30-40 years. Given the continuity of Nugent’s assessment of Ghana as a country divided into ‘Big Men’ and ‘Small Boys’, it seems unlikely.

But what the debate does is highlight the problems of the young in Ghana, who find their chances of upward mobility severely restricted by the existing power structure, a state of affairs which needs to be addressed with urgency.

The writer is an Emeritus Professor, London Metropolitan University,UK