High unemployment is a security threat – Osafo-Maafo

Senior Presidential Advisor to President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, Yaw Osafo-Maafo says the high rate of graduate unemployment in Ghana is scary and becoming a national security threat.

He blamed the situation on the education system which has departed from hands on skills training to theory based.

“Anytime I look at tertiary education I become nervous. When I was Minister of Education, there were five or four universities belonging to government and one private but as I speak we have 95 universities almost a 100 training people but no hand on skills fundamentally very few will come out with hand on skills so what is going to happen it’s scary. We need to do some serious retrospection about the education system”.

The Senior Presidential Advisory said he is not comfortable how Universities almost all universities in Ghana continue to offer humanity courses rather than technical program.

“I am very uncomfortable about what I am seeing from tertiary education system and the outcome on the unemployment arising out of the educational system .You can’t go from five to about 100 universities in about 15 years and none of the universities is technical “

“We’ve converted all our Polytechnics into universities the reasons I don’t understand.We had Polytechnics which were doing far more humanity subjects than even technical subjects and as Minister for Education I invited all the Polytechnics and wanted to question why they were doing certain courses , when I went through the exercise with them I withdrew my complain because this was what was happening , all those who have done very well in maths and science want to do Engineering and other Science and Medicine so at the end of the A level of O level you hardly have any very good maths or science students left , they’ve all gone to other places so if you want people with maths background you won’t get “.

He therefore lauded initiative by Education Minister Dr.Yaw Osei Adutwum to introduce students with no science background to pre-enginering programs .

Yaw Osafo Maafo suggested that stakeholders particularly churches and government need to meet over the situation to find solutions through a paradigm shift of the education system.

” the government and the churches need to sit down on the drawing board and think again we can’t continue like this, because unemployment is a serious problem and it is becoming a security problem we need to resolve it”.

The former Finance, and Education Minister Yaw Osafo Maafo said this Saturday August 19,2023 during the 23 General Meeting of Presbyterian church of Ghana at Kwahu Abetifi.

He said Presbyterian Church of Ghana having established about 2,500 basic schools, 36 senior high schools and two universities has the locus standi to sit with government address challenges making Ghana Education system counter productive.

“We need the church and the government because of your experience both in and out of Ghana to sit with government to look at education the Presbyterians are good at this because you have been the middle of good education systems in this country so when we are in difficulty in our education and we need to fall on one Christian unit it is going to be the Presbyterian Church, you have the know how you have the experience we need to sit and think again we can’t continue like this otherwise we will create a security problem for ourselves.”

The unemployment rate in Ghana is expected to reach 5.00 percent by the end of 2023, according to Trading Economics’ global macro models and analysts’ expectations.

In the long-term, the Ghana Unemployment Rate is projected to trend around 4.70 percent in 2024 and 4.50 percent in 2025, according to our econometric models, Trading Economics said.

According to Ghana’s 2022 Annual Household Income and Expenditure Survey (AHIES) Third Quarter Labour Statistics released on Wednesday 3rd May 2023 by Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) indicated that,about 1.76 million persons were unemployed in the third quarter of 2022.

Within this population, two out of every three unemployed persons were females. Across the three quarters, about 157,000 persons experienced an unemployment spell i.e. they were unemployed in all the quarters.

Close to 7.5 million persons remained employed throughout the three quarters out of the about 11 million persons employed in each quarter.

This indicates that across the three quarters about 3.5 million persons were moving in and out of employment depicting vulnerabilities.

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