THE STATE OF THE GHANAIAN YOUTH

Youth may be explained as the period in the life of a person, usually between the ages of 15 to 35, during which character and personality are shaped, attitudes and values are developed, and skills are acquired for personal, societal, and national development. They are the crop of people who constitute the future of a country; hence, their development is a priority for most countries. The story here in Ghana is that of a cliché or lip service on the part of the government. Klu (2010) argued that previous and successive governments are just changing the names of youth organizations without any purposeful forward-looking in the political, social, economic, and cultural advancement of the condition of Ghanaian youths. Even though it is a popular saying that the youth are the future leaders, it is unfortunate to admit that the situation is different in Ghana. According to the Speaker of Parliament, Hon. Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin, though the youth constitute about 68 percent of the population of Ghana, only 5 percent of members of the 8th Parliament of the fourth republic are youth. The youths in Ghana are currently bedeviled with moral decadence and attitudinal issues, poor values, and poor skills, and social media has become an avenue for raining insults on the elderly and leaders. The social ethics that the youth are expected to exhibit are missing, drug use and gambling, i.e., betting, among the youth have been the order of the day. Currently, most youths are not interested in issues that threaten their development; they have become foot soldiers serving the interests of their political masters against the common good of the people.

The systemic structures in Ghana make it difficult for the youths to break through economically, which is to be economically independent, especially those from poor backgrounds. It is assumed that education is the key to success, but the situation is different since the majority of the educated youth struggle to even make ends meet, which can be justified by Ghana’s percentage of youth dependency ratio of 62.2% in 2020 according to the Central Intelligence Agency. In brief, the economic environment is not supportive enough for the youth. In the political sphere, everything is dominated by the older generation. There is no real space for the youths to actively and effectively participate in the governance process aside from becoming foot soldiers and perpetrating political violence. There are a lot of challenges facing the youth in Ghana, among them are, but are not limited to, the following;

One major challenge affecting the youth in Ghana is the lack of access to quality education and skill training. Advocates of youth development uphold strongly that for the youth to be empowered, there should be quality education, or better yet, quality education and skill training should be the priority in the quest to develop the youth for a meaningful life. This position is amply acknowledged by the 2010 National Youth Policy of Ghana, which states, among other things, “that education and skills training are critical to the development of the youth for a fruitful and responsible life” (Agyei-triple, 2012). But irrespective of the knowledge of this by political leaders, little or no effort has been made, as most youth graduate from school with no skills that will put them in pole position for employment. The inability of the state to make quality education accessible to the youth has deepened their woes further.

The lack of access to quality education and skill training among the youth in Ghana, as explained above, has given rise to another major problem, which is youth unemployment. Youth unemployment constitutes the top socio-economic problem thwarting youth development in Ghana with the increasing number of unemployed graduates. Though unemployment is a global challenge, the condition here in Ghana is very unfortunate, as in 2019 alone, the youth unemployment rate was 13.69% according to the International Labour Organization estimates, (Plecher, 2020). This is to a large extent reflected in the youth dependency ratio of 62.2% established in 2020 (Central Intelligence Agency, 2020). The World Bank indicated in 2021 that the youth unemployment rate in Ghana was 7.16%. The Commonwealth Secretariat, however, estimated in 2021 that the average youth unemployment rate in Ghana was 8 percent. The International Labour Organization estimates the youth unemployment rate in Ghana at 7.137% in 2022. This is premised on their classification of youth as being between the ages of 15-24. While joblessness is a challenge among all age groups, its effect is predominantly severe among the youth, who make up the majority of the population. Young people tend to have higher rates of unemployment and engage in vulnerable and informal employment (Baah- Boateng, 2018).

The challenges confronting youth can be minimized by exploring a series of practical remedies to empower themselves. The problem facing the youth has persisted for ages, signaling a lack of interest on the part of state authorities to avert the situation. Therefore, the youth can take it upon themselves through the following means to effect the change they seek.

Entrepreneurship and apprenticeship are avenues that the youth can engage in to prepare themselves for national development since the government and private organizations cannot employ the teeming graduates coming out of universities each year. With entrepreneurship, the youth can set up smaller businesses, and those who have just graduated can form a group, pull resources together, and start something on their own, which can create employment for other people when carefully managed. And also, as a result of the risky nature of entrepreneurial activities, the youths can devote a period of time to understudy someone for practical skills not taught in class to prepare them for the entrepreneurial journey.

Also, the outbreak of the coronavirus has taught the whole country the need to produce what we eat locally and eschew overdependence on foreign products. This has exposed an avenue through which the youth can engage to better their lives and contribute towards national development. The Agricultural sector at this moment of the coronavirus and even beyond will hold more prospects than ever, hence the need for the youth to make the utmost use of this opportunity.

To conclude, the story of youth development in Ghana only becomes a concern when elections are approaching.  It is about time the youth sit up and take the bull by the horn since their future cannot be built for them, but they can build themselves for the future.

Author’s Profile: Musah Issaka is an educationist, a social scientist and a ghostwriter. He holds a first-class degree in Bachelor of Arts in Social Studies Education with Political Science from the University of Education, Winneba. He had his pre-tertiary education at Ghana Senior High School (GHANASCO), Tamale, in the Northern Region. He is a professional academic tutor and a lead researcher at M.I. Research Consult, with over five (5) years of experience in writing articles and projects.

Recommended Citation: Musah, I. (2023). The State of the Ghanaian Youth. Published on https://salamkuundaa.net/

Please address all correspondence to: Musah Issaka by Phone: at (+233) 0247975555 and by email on musahishaaq74@gmail.com

REFERENCE

Agyei-tripple, N.A (2012). Youth Empowerment Through Quality Education: The Case of Mass Failure in B.E.C.E. Retrieved from https://www.modernghana.com/amp/news/378861/youth-empowerment-through-quality-eduation.html     On 03/03/2020.

Baah- Boateng, W. (2018). Jobless Growth is Ghana’s Biggest Youth Challenge. Retrieved from https://acetforafrica.org/highlights/jobless-growth-is-ghanas-biggest-youth-challenge/ on May 19, 2020.

Central Intelligence Agency (2020). The World Factbook. Africa: Ghana.Retrieved from https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/print_gh.html on June 10, 2020.

Klu, M. (2010). The Identity and Status of the Ghanaian Youth. Retrieved from https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/features/The-Identity-And-Status-Of-The-Ghanaian-Youth-175119 on May 21, 2020

Plecher, H. (2020). Youth Unemployment Rate in Ghana in 2019. Retrieved from www.statista.com/statistics/812039/youth-unemployment-rate-in-Ghana on May 21, 2020.