The Foundation for Security and Development in Africa (FOSDA) together with the National Network of Youth Groups (NNYOG) is calling on government to increase funding for TVET from the CST. This funding is needed to make TVET more robust as well as repackaging and make it attractive to the youth to consider it as a fine opportunity to acquire skills for employment.

This call follows findings on the expenditure trends in the Education sector from 2011-2018 which shows a limited expenditure trend for TVET delivery in the education sector. The limited expenditure in the TVET subsector does not reflect the “extravagant” publicity given to it over the years as “panacea” for youth unemployment. 

Youth unemployment in Ghana is still a major challenge for government, despite the youth employment policy initiatives put in place by governments over the years. Youth unemployment rate is higher 12% that the national rate estimated at 4.5%, The contextual reality of the problem is that many young people still lack requisite skills and capacity to create employment for themselves and others. 

In 2016 it was projected that, because of the country’s growing youth population, 300,000 new jobs would have to be created each year to absorb the increasing number of unemployed young people. The youth in Ghana now represent one third of the population. Could this be a demographic dividend or time bomb waiting to explode in our faces? What will happen to the recent (2020) WASSCE candidates who did not obtain the pass mark to enter the tertiary institutions? Is there any hope anywhere for them in TVET? Will they see it attractive enough to embrace it?

Research has shown that only 10% of graduates find jobs after their first year of completing school and up to 10 years for a large number of graduates to secure employment due to varied challenges that ranged from the lack of employable skills, unavailability of funding capital for entrepreneurship, poor attitudes of graduates towards job opportunities, as well as the low capacities of industry to absorb the huge numbers. (Institute of Statistical Social and Economic Research—ISSER, 2017). The dynamics are that unemployment rate is highest for persons with Secondary School Certificates, at 19.3%, and 11.3% for Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) certificate holders, but 7.3% for persons with tertiary educational qualifications. It seems government is running against time to solve youth unemployment and TVET has been touted as one critical area to focus on.

Get FOSDA document(on TVET) in detail on our Reports page.