Citing countries such as Japan and Germany, which had developed through technical and vocational skills, the President was optimistic that the investments his administration was making in TVET education would pay off 

“I think we all have been speaking about the importance of TVET education for the country. I am a great believer of taking examples and inspiration from people who have succeeded and done things before. 

“You look around in the world and you see the countries and societies that have succeeded and been able to build good standards of living for their people. Countries like Germany, like Japan – look into how they did it and you will see the importance [of TVET] to them…Science and technology, and being able to change the workforce where people can do things with their hands,” he said.

President Akufo-Addo said this when some young Ghanaians who represented the nation in a skills competition in Namibia and returned with four medals called on him at the Jubilee House on Tuesday

The team presented the two gold and two silver medals they won from the competition to the President.

Louis Morgan won gold medal in the mechanical engineering contest, Manfugi Agoh from Ho Technical University won a gold medal for web technology.

Ibrahim Adam, a student of Accra Technical University and Deladem Okoh won the two silver.

Commending the students on the feat, President Akufo-Addo said the future of the country was dependent on such people.

The President expressed concerns over the country’s educational system which focused mainly on white collar jobs, “where you have a lot of people doing big talk, and have ignored creating things with their hands”.

He assured that the government would do its best to provide the necessary resources to develop the TVET sector.

He said although the cocoa and other natural resources of the country were important, value could only be created out of those resources through TVET.

On her part, the Deputy Education Minister in charge of TVET, Gifty Twum Ampofo said the government had made a lot of investments to improve TVET education in the country.

She said TVET had become widely accepted in the educational system of the country, as students do not regard that as a last choice in choosing subjects for their tertiary education.