Dr Ishmael Yamson, the Board Chairman of MTN Ghana, has called for a shift in how Ghana values technical and vocational skills, warning that the country will struggle to build a sustainable economy if skilled technicians continue to rank below white-collar professionals.

Speaking at the 77th Annual New Year School and Conference today [January 6, 2025], Dr Yamson said Ghana’s development would be slowed unless welders, engineers and other technical workers received the same social standing and pay as professionals in banking and corporate offices.

“This mindset must be reset. Skilled technicians in a reset Ghana should command the same respect and pay as a bank manager,” he said.

Dr Yamson noted that Ghana was producing large numbers of graduates whose training did not match the needs of a modern economy, leaving many young people without jobs despite years of formal education.

“We are currently producing thousands of graduates from high schools, colleges and universities who are unemployable because their skills do not match the market,” he said. “We are training students for the economy of the 1980s, not 2030.”

He said the growing gap between education and industry was undermining job creation and increasing frustration among young people, many of whom now see migration as the only option open to them.

Dr Yamson said Ghana’s education system required a reset, beginning with the way university programmes are designed. He argued that academic curricula should no longer be developed within universities alone, without input from industry.

“University curricula should not be written in isolation by professors. They should be developed with industry bodies,” he said.

He stressed that Ghana’s long-term progress would not come from traditional white-collar professions alone, but from practical and technical skills linked to industrial growth and production.

“The development of this country will not be driven by lawyers, sociologists and political scientists alone. It will be driven by welders, mechatronics engineers, agronomists and toolmakers,” he said.

Dr Yamson added that the continued neglect of technical skills had contributed to graduate unemployment, widening skills gaps and low productivity, even as industries struggled to find workers with the right training.

As part of a wider address on the need for a national economic reset, Dr Yamson said efforts to stabilise inflation and the currency would fall short without deeper structural changes.

He said a reset in skills development and education priorities was needed to prepare Ghana for growth in areas such as artificial intelligence, green energy and advanced manufacturing.

“This mindset must be reset,” he said, warning that without urgent action, Ghana risked training generations of young people for jobs that no longer exist.