Given the mismatch between Ghana’s education and the development needs, former Minister for Power, Dr. Kwabena Donkor, is making a strong case for why the government must be deliberate and take the center stage in the direction of the country’s education.
Development institutions such as the World Bank have confirmed that Ghana’s educational system is not producing the required human capital to drive the country’s development. In essence, there is a wide gap between the skills of graduates or human resources produced by the country’s education system and the needed skills for the country’s transformational development.
Dr. Kwabena Donkor, who speaks passionately about the current situation, believes Ghana’s struggle to match the pace of countries it once stood shoulder-to-shoulder with is rooted in one blunt truth. The country has lost control of what education was supposed to produce.
He believes that if Ghana truly wants the kind of workforce that can transform the country such as engineers who can build, technicians who can fix, thinkers who can innovate, then the government must stop watching from the sidelines and take full charge of where our education is heading.
And he explains why.
A System Built for Yesterday’s Needs
Dr. Donkor begins by painting a simple but revealing picture. What we call “Western education” in Ghana did not begin as a system designed for national development. It was created to serve the needs of missionaries and the colonial administration. Schools trained priests, catechists, and clerks. It was a type of education, he says, that was meant for white-collar office work and nothing more.
But independence brought a new duty of nation-building. Nation-building, he stresses, demands a far broader kind of education, one that trains people who can solve problems, build industries, and think for themselves.
Today, however, the system has barely shifted away from its colonial roots.
We must appreciate the historical basis for Western education in Ghana, what we now term Western education. The initial concept of education was to produce priests, catechists, etc., and clerks for the civil service. So it was a white-collar education to meet the demands or the exigencies of the day,” he recounted to The High Street Journal in an exclusive interview.
He added, “However, in nation-building, education becomes more expansive to create the quality human capital that a nation cannot develop without. And that also means the right human capital, not just education for education’s sake.”
The Missing Link: Education With Purpose
While Ghana, he argues, has not matched its educational system with its development goals, other countries have. He mentions countries such as South Korea, Malaysia, and Singapore as nations that shared Ghana’s economic level in the 1960s, and made deliberate decisions to produce the right kind of human capital. Today, they are global success stories.
Ghana, on the other hand, has not shifted as the other countries did. He maintains that although the country continued with education, it is not the kind that equips people to build a modern economy.
He stresses that reading and writing are important, but development requires much more than literacy. It requires critical thinking, technical ability, and a deep sense of national purpose.
“In the 21st century, in Ghana, wanting to develop, and I say this in the context of some of our peers, where they are and where we are. At independence, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand were at about the same stage of development. In fact, we’re even slightly ahead of some of them. Those were our peers,” he narrated.
He added, “Today, unfortunately, we can’t call them our peers. And so when I talk of education in the context of national development, I’m talking of an education that produces qualitative nationalistic human capital.”
The Decline of Technical and Scientific Training
Nothing worries Dr. Donkor more than what has happened to institutions once created to champion science and technology. He doesn’t mince words when he says, “KNUST has become a disappointment.”
He argues that technical universities, the very institutions meant to train middle-level technical workers, now run more business courses than engineering or technology. Workshops are neglected, machines are outdated, and practical training is thinning out.
In his estimation, the critical reason that has caused these technical and technological institutions to abandon their mandate is that non-science courses are cheaper to run. He outlines that no labs, equipment, or workshops are needed to run these programs. Just classrooms and lectures.
He added that universities that rely on internally generated funds naturally drift toward what brings in the most money. But this, he insists, is where the state has failed.
“In the age of science and technology, we are retrogressing. And I say this with no apology. Institutions set up to pioneer, to advance science, technology, and education have turned into other things other than what they were founded. KNUST is the biggest disappointment. Absolute disappointment. And then look at our polytechnics,” he bemoaned.
Development Is Not Accidental – The Need for Governmental Direction
Dr. Donkor argues that the destiny of a country cannot be left to university administrators doing cost-benefit analysis. When education becomes a free-for-all, the national interest suffers.
If Ghana must progress, the government must step in and state clearly the direction it wants education to take.
The government, he says, must communicate clearly where the country’s development is going, and what kind of skilled workforce it needs for the next 10 to 20 years.
That means planning based on evidence, knowing how many engineers, technicians, health workers, digital specialists, or agricultural scientists the country will need, and investing in those areas.
The government, Dr. Donkor adds, must back the direction communicated with concrete actions. He says Labs must work. Workshops must function. Research centres must exist outside of PowerPoint presentations and policy promises. To Dr. Donkor, this is not optional; it is the backbone of development.
“The universities, as long as they are dependent on IGF, will allocate more resources to those courses that bring the most money. And those are the business courses, the law courses. Almost every university now runs law programs. And that is the failure of states to dictate. Development is not accidental. Development is deliberate and purposeful,” he emphasized.
He proposed that “we must determine that in the next 10 to 15 years, which areas are going to be critical for our national development. So, between the Ministry of Employment, the Ministry of Education, National Development Planning Commission, we must have a certain national direction. In the next 10 to 15 years, when we do a manpower audit, when we do a human capital projection, we will need to train more people in these areas. These are the emerging areas of job creation. Emerging areas that inure to national development. And we back this with resources.”
A Call for Decisive Leadership
The former Member of Parliament for Pru East is calling for decisive leadership. Government must define the path; universities must follow; resources must support the plan.
Ghana, he believes, still has the potential to rise. But it will require an education system that is not just producing graduates but producing builders of a nation. And for that to happen, the government cannot merely supervise.
He says, “the sort of free-for-all, all education and directionless education” must end, adding that “the central government must take a bold position.”
It must lead from the centre and with a clear vision of the human capital Ghana needs.
