Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, the Member of Parliament for Ofoase/Ayirebi, has put out five suggestions that the government could implement to address the nation’s growing young unemployment issue.
He recommended that the government base each job program on a publicly available delivery scorecard that includes precise data on beneficiaries, employment retention, time-to-placement, and cost per job produced.
Additionally, he argued that teaching individuals without generating demand for their talents would simply lead to disillusionment and that skills creation should be funded apart from job development.
“Shift the funding model from sovereign financing to private mobilisation. Government should focus on de-risking, co-investing, and creating regulatory clarity while private capital drives large-scale job creation,” he suggested.
Mr. Oppong Nkrumah asked the government to make the apprenticeship economy the cornerstone of the youth employment plan through national certification, employer co-funding, and clear pathways into work or self-employment in a statement regarding Ghana’s rising young unemployment rate.
In order to inform policy and budgetary decisions, he recommended “Build a credible Labour Market Information System that publishes timely district-level data on vacancies, sectoral demand, skills gaps, and graduate absorption to guide policy and budget decisions.”
According to data from the Ghana Statistical Service’s Quarterly Labour Force Statistics, the unemployment rate for young Ghanaians between the ages of 15 and 24 was 32% in December 2024, according to Mr. Oppong Nkrumah, Ranking Member of the Economy and Development Committee.
According to him, that percentage had increased to 32.5% by the third quarter of 2025.
“In Greater Accra, youth unemployment in Q3 2025 reached 49.3 per cent and nearly one in every two young people in our capital region is unemployed,” he stated.
According to the MP, the GSS also revealed that seven out of ten Ghanaians without jobs were younger than 35.
“The GSS classifies 1.34 million young people aged 15 to 24 as not in education, employment, or training. “
“When Ghana’s National Youth Policy definition extending to age 35 is applied, that figure rises to 1.95 million as nearly two million young Ghanaians are neither earning nor learning,” he said.
The ranking member of the Economy and Development Committee, Mr. Oppong Nkrumah, stated that the nation’s unemployment issue was specific to young people and was becoming worse rather than a general issue with a youth component.
He stated bluntly that “we must all take responsibility” and that no government, including the former New Patriotic Party government, has completely resolved that issue.
Mr. Oppong Nkrumah mentioned several employment-related initiatives that the present government had suggested as a solution when he asked what was being done to address unemployment and whether it was working.
He mentioned the One Million Coders Program, the Adwumawura Program, the 24-Hour Economy, and the promise of 250,000 employment a year.
He claimed that although the 24-Hour Economy was introduced in July 2025, the Authority Bill was just presented to the House in February, and there had already been complaints that it did not include the promised shift system or increase in employment.
“The One Million Coders Programme received over 90,000 applications in 48 hours, showing the hunger among young people.”
“Yet by November 2025, the programme’s website was effectively offline before being relaunched with plans to onboard 30,000 people in the first cohort,” he said.
He stated that although a goal of 10,000 firms annually was set in Adwumawura, only 475 entrepreneurs had received subsidies by March 2026, 11 months after the program’s inception.
He remembered how 21,000 youths gathered at El-Wak Stadium on November 12 of last year for a single recruitment exercise for the Ghana Armed Forces.
He claimed that while they were vying for just 2,000 spots, six people perished in the rush and five others were admitted to critical care.
“The question confronting us is whether these programmes will work, or whether we urgently need a new job creation strategy,” he said.
“Ghanaian youth do not want slogans. They want feasible programmes that create dignified, productive, and well-paid jobs,” he said.
Source: newsthemegh.com