Former Finance Minister Kwabena Duffuor has said focusing on Technical and Vocational Training (TVET) will be pivotal to reducing unemployment in Ghana.

At a lecture on the theme: ‘The Ghanaian Dream; Transforming the economy through job creation and opportunities for all’ held at the Tang Palace on Monday, 29 November 2021, the former Governor of the Bank of Ghana said: “The neglect of technical and vocational training over the years might have contributed to the high unemployment and rising poverty among the youth”. 

“Many of them lack basic job skills”, he observed.

In his view, “high youth unemployment and prevalent skills gaps within the labour force underline the necessity for vocational and technical education”. 

As far as he is concerned, “Ghana must place TVET education in the centre of job creation strategy to successfully address the high youth unemployment”.

According to him, 20% of the employed population have had no formal education while 54% have basic education and 16% have higher education.

“Not only does unemployment cause poverty but higher crime rates”, Dr Duffuor said. 

He noted that children with “unemployed parents don’t do well academically”. 

Also, he noted that the “inability to create good jobs and gain sustainable jobs for the young people will foster the problem of inequality”. 

“It’s also an issue of gross economic inefficiency”, he said.

“Although the officially measured rate of unemployment is about 8.4% as of 2017 and there’s a concern for young people’s access to decent employment, without a transformation of the current economic structure, employment opportunities will remain limited,” Dr Duffuor pointed out.