<p>Natural resource-rich economies often struggle to translate resource abundance into broad-based development, making the resource curse debate highly relevant for countries like Ghana. This study examines the impact of natural resource rents on Ghana’s economic growth and human development by testing the resource curse hypothesis for its relevance in a dual-model setting. With the support of time series data spanning from 1990 to 2023, the study estimates two log-linear models, with economic growth and human development as the dependent variables. Natural resource rents and industrialization are the main explanatory variables, while control variables are governance, capital formation, and openness to trade. With Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares (FMOLS), Canonical Cointegrating Regression (CCR), Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (DOLS), and Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model (ARDL), the estimates confirm a negative association between natural resource rents and the two development outcomes, substantiating the existence of a resource curse in Ghana. Conversely, industrialization and governance have a positive impact on economic and human development, whereas capital formation makes a surprising negative contribution. Granger causality tests also identify the directional contribution of industrialization and governance to development performance. The findings suggest that structural transformation through industrial upgrading, good governance, and quality public investment is essential to avoid the resource curse and achieve sustainable growth in Ghana.</p> Graphical abstract <p>The graphical abstract summarizes the study’s most important findings by condensing the directional relationships of the significant explanatory variables.</p>