Education and locked-up opportunities, the Ghanaian Youth Wahala

How do you expect a graduate with the education and locked-up opportunities to be excited about being a Ghanaian when he or she has no means to survive, no job, no decent accommodation but just a certificate?

Education is said to be the key to unlocking opportunities for the youth. As a result of the knowledge the Ghanaian youth gains in any field through years of studying, he or she is expected to be literate who is ready to tap into the endless opportunities in the field of work, self-development, and wealth creation to experience some appreciable fulfilling life after school.  

Having a good education and locked-up opportunities can be very frustrating for the youth in any country.

Is this really the case for the teeming Ghanaian youth that should be the most important resource of this nation?

‘We’ve created more than 1.5 million jobs” this Joe Biden, The US president in May 2021.  

Ghana is one of the countries where it is believed that Education is an important catalyst for propelling dreams into reality however, this belief seems to be a mirage in recent times.

For many graduates, education is only a means to an end and not an end in itself because it creates and develops your potentials for tapping into available opportunities and teaches you how to leverage your knowledge and skills to create opportunities. 

The so-called opportunities that Education is expected to help provide are either non-existent or frustrating or limited to only a minority few who are connected to persons in higher authority.

By some skewed divine manipulations, Ghana’s human resource thus uneducated, educated, trained, skilled and the youth cannot find opportunities but are heavily pregnant with ideas that can lead to Ghana’s versions of the likes of Bill gate, Steve Jobs, Dangote, and other billionaires. But, the frustrating system which makes it impossible for many to succeed can not be excused when apportioning blames. 

The lack of strategic thinking and planning for posterity by leadership, politicians, and those in charge of the country’s resources is indeed demotivating. Research by Child Right International revealed that children in Ghana between the ages of 12-17 want to exit the country in search of greener pastures by 2040. These children believe the government needs to create jobs, improve education quality and halt the wanton corruption and allegations of corruption that never get investigated that is flourishing under the watch of leadership. 

Ghana’s education system continues to applaud readers of abstract material, knowledge, and scholars who read all manner of programmes of less relevance at the university. The certificate is preferred to ability and skills. Who you know and the connections you have land you jobs and not the quality you bring to the table. 

Sadly, the education many receive does not match industry demands as there is a constant misfit between graduate quality and job skills and requirements.

Today, those who study banking and finance are in private schools as teachers, graduate teachers are in the factories as factory hands and supervisors, accounting graduates are working as marketers and many more university graduates have become Uber drivers. “The devil finds work for idle hands” comes to mind but these misfits, could they be the results of a failed system that channels out more graduates than the job it creates?

Whiles these graduates find something doing, their training and education which should find them in the right industry or sector so that their full potential can be realized is a mere dream for many. 

Of what use is Education if it is unable to unlock doors for the youth. Many struggle to find jobs after school and our leaders seem not to be interested in solving the unemployment problem. They are good at quoting huge figures to tell the jobs they have created but we hardly see anything on the ground. 

The Ghanaian youth who want to venture into self-employment or become entrepreneurs have to sometimes battle with regulatory authorities, the bureaucratic systems, and many individualized interests of public servants to get the genuine documentation done. 

If one form of bribery temptations does not come your way, the bureaucratic systems which have been enhanced by additional bottleneck by some public workers at post will knock you off.

If the educated are struggling and facing all these, what hope exists for the uneducated youth who are desperate for work that requires more physical strength and less brain work? 

Indeed, the current government needs to create an enabling environment for entrepreneurial spirited graduates to start businesses. But how many will be able to access opportunities for government funding should they exist without the need to have some political affiliations.

READ: NDC reminds Ghanaians of Nana Addo’s eight election promises

We have a long way to go as a nation if we are to snatch the youth out of the hopelessness they face on a day-to-day basis. The time to deal with the youth having education and locked-up opportunities is now!

SOURCE: Ghana24.org – Copyright | Republishing this content anywhere without prior permission is a crime.

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