The Minister of Trade and Industry, Ekwow Spio-Garbrah (Dr), has blamed the increasing number of unemployed graduates on the content of subjects taught both in the senior high schools (SHS) and tertiary institutions.
“So when we talk about unemployed graduates, it is partly because of the contents of what we are teaching in our senior high schools and our universities that when people come out, unless they get a job in a salary position, they are not ready to start their own businesses,” he observed.
Mr Spio-Garbrah, who was sharing his thoughts at the opening of a social enterprise policy dialogue in Accra, said most of the teachers in those institutions might be limited only to the areas they taught, because they were not privileged to know what was going on in the real world and also never had the opportunity to work in commercial and industrial establishments.
The occasion was also used to launch the Social Enterprise Landscape in Ghana, which was commissioned by the British Council in Ghana.
The minister, therefore, appealed to professionals and entrepreneurs with their wide range of experience to visit their former schools or the nearest SHSs or universities to share their life experiences with the students to help expand their horizons, and vision as well as challenge their understanding of what the world was really about.
“That history, chemistry or geography teacher who has never worked in those commercial industries cannot share those experiences with the students,” he said.
Ownership of our economy
Mr Spio-Garbrah expressed concern that the educational system, though it had produced so many bright people, “yet we don’t know anyting about our economy, therefore we cannot control it.”
He called on Ghanaians to own their economy and manage it, if Ghana did not want to rely on others to develop its economy.
The Director-General of the National Development Planning Commission, Dr Nii Moi Thompson, in a remark, explained that unlike the Vision 2020 which was discarded by the government after its existence, the country was looking at developing a long-term development plan that could not be dismantled by any government spanning 40 years.
The Director of the British Council, Ms Liliana Biglou, said the United Kingdom (UK) was one of the countries noted for championing social enterprise and its economic impact.
The British Council in Ghana is keen to leverage the UK experience, replicating it in the country, combining it with the Ghanaian natural flair in enterprise and innovation.
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