Ghana has exhibited strong local content development prospects in its nascent oil sector, albeit low commitment to building local capacity as exemplified by the failure of its flagship capacity building project – the Enterprise Development Centre (EDC) to train Ghanaian Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (GhSMEs) to participate in the sector. Nuancing prevailing explanations for this challenge, which emphasise institutional factors, this paper assigns a major role to the imperatives by ruling elites to build and maintain coalitions capable of winning elections, which in turn shaped their commitment to enforce the project. The lack of mutual interest between ruling elites and local firms, flowing from the low technological capabilities of GhSMEs and their inability to sufficiently support the re-electioneering needs of the ruling party, rendered them incapable of deploying significant holding power to influence the implementation of the EDC in a developmental way. The paper draws attention to the growing recognition that institutional outcomes, particularly under competitive clientelist regimes such as Ghana are not shaped by the formal logic of proper organisational management per se, but rather by the incentives of powerful elites in their bid to generate and protect the benefits associated with such institutions.

加纳在其新兴的石油行业展现出强大的本地内容开发前景，尽管其对本地能力建设的承诺不高，例如其旗舰能力建设项目——企业发展中心 (EDC) 以培训加纳中小型企业 (GhSMEs) 的失败。 ) 参与该部门。Nuancing prevailing explanations for this challenge, which emphasise institutional factors, this paper assigns a major role to the imperatives by ruling elites to build and maintain coalitions capable of winning elections, which in turn shaped their commitment to enforce the project. 由于 GhSME 的技术能力低下以及无法充分支持执政党的连任需要，统治精英与当地公司之间缺乏共同利益，使他们无法以发展的方式部署重要的控制力来影响 EDC 的实施。这篇论文提请人们注意越来越多的人认识到制度结果，特别是在像加纳这样的竞争性附庸制度下，并不是由适当的组织管理本身的形式逻辑决定的，而是由有权势的精英为了产生和保护与此类机构相关的利益。