He said that would enable the students to have a sound mind to study, adding that the inability of the secretariat to promptly pay the school fees of beneficiaries was putting too much stress on them.

Ghanaian students in China

In an interview with the Daily Graphic in Beijing, China, Mr Boateng explained that most of the students who were studying in China under government scholarship had challenges with receiving their money on time.

Ghana tops African countries with the highest number of foreign students pursuing tertiary education in the People’s Republic of China.

Currently, there are 6,380 Ghanaian students pursuing various programmes in the various provinces in China.
Mr Boateng said last year alone, 2,000 students from Ghana enrolled in various tertiary institutions in China “and we are hoping that the numbers will keep increasing as the years roll on.”

Educational opportunities in China

In his opinion, the human resource development, which the Chinese Government was focusing on, was in the right direction and that it is an area he was passionate about so he would see to it that while he was in China, he would encourage as many Ghanaian students as possible to access tertiary education in China.

Mr Boateng said he had been in touch with the Ghanaian students in China and had always reminded them that they were the catalyst for change because they were in China at the time China was transforming.

“I have been telling them that they are in China at a time China is transforming and I expect them to come back to help transform our country, whether in their own families, communities and indeed the nation at large,” he said.

Opportunities back home

Mr Boateng also appealed to the government to make more opportunities available for students studying abroad to entice them to return home to contribute to nation building.

He explained that most of the students who studied abroad refused to return because there were no job opportunities back home.

He observed that some institutions in Ghana were still pro-western and, therefore, discriminated against scholars from the Asian countries such as China, even though China now had some of the best educational systems in the world.

“We have sent our children to Europe for the past 50 or so years but it has not shown much difference and so I think we should also try the Asian model,” he suggested.