Ghana’s rising graduate unemployment crisis has been blamed on the lack of linkage between what is taught and researched on university campuses and what is needed at the common market.
According to academics and industry players, Ghanaian universities continue to produce thousands of research papers and graduates annually, but without a deliberate bridge to industry, farms and the informal sector where over 80% of jobs are created.
“There is no bridge between campus and common market, hence unemployment,” a lecturer at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) told journalists in Kumasi.
He explained that while students graduate with theses on tomato processing, cassava mechanization and low-cost water filters, the prototypes are left to rust in laboratories while tomato farmers at Pwalugu and Akomadan continue to record post-harvest losses.
Ghana’s graduate unemployment is estimated at over 12% according to the Ghana Statistical Service, with many graduates spending up to 3 years searching for jobs.
Experts say the disconnect is visible. The crop science lecturer who has published 10 papers on tomatoes is just 30 minutes away from the tomato farmer at Pwalugu, yet they have never met. The engineering student who designed a cassava peeler never tested it with gari processors at Asafo Market.
“Our universities teach in English, our market women think in Twi, Dagbani and Ewe. The research is written in academic English that even the DCE cannot understand. We bring solutions to the library, China brings solutions to the market,” the lecturer added.
The Ghana Employers Association has in the past complained that graduates are not work-ready and require extensive retraining.
A tomato farmer at Pwalugu, who spoke to this reporter, said he has never been approached by any university to adopt any research.
“We hear they have solutions at UDS, but they never come to us. We still dry our tomatoes on the floor and they rot. We need machines, not papers,” he said.
Stakeholders are now calling for compulsory university-industry market days every semester, where universities exhibit their research solutions at regional markets instead of conference halls, and for government to fund scaling of local innovations before importing foreign ones.
They also want promotion of lecturers to be tied to adoption of their research by industry, not just number of publications.
“If we don’t build that bridge, we will continue to produce professors on paper and unemployed graduates on the streets,” the KNUST lecturer warned.
Alexander Afriyie, supervising editor, ghanacrimereport.com and ghanatalk.com