“Job Creation Through Policy: A Blueprint for Ghana’s Entrepreneurial Development & Industrial Transformation”
As our national economic discourse increasingly focuses on an entrepreneurial mindset and structural turnarounds, the public requires clear, actionable technical insights rather than political rhetoric.
Recent data from the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) reveals a critical national unemployment rate from 14.7% in 2023 to 13.0%, with youth joblessness (ages 15–35) escalating to a staggering 21.9%, meaning nearly one in every three young persons is locked out of the economy.
This is a crisis-level situation! It is crisis level because absorption into job placement is still alarmingly low, even though there are signs of high numbers in employment numbers!
In Volta and Central Tongu, my own districts, unemployment data is relatively lower but still alarming. Additionally, the real issue in Volta, especially the Central Tongu or Tongu enclave, is underemployment and venerability in job situations.
To put it plainly, available jobs are unstable and low remuneration! There is the need for us as citizens to support the government and turn around the situation.
It is unfortunate that Tongu is blessed with resources that we can put our ideas together to take advantage of numerous government policies to create the needed jobs for our people. We have the fresh water body flowing to the sea. We have the clay deposit. We have the arable land, and we have the untapped sites for tourism, just to mention a few.
I recall in our deliberation during 2024 NDC manifesto preparation, the issue of Local Economic Development (LED) came up. It was agreed at that level that MMDAs factor LED into their Medium Term Development Plan.
This idea saw reflection in our 2024 Manifesto. Indeed, LED, as a policy tool, can produce two benefits if done properly and intentionally targeted. LED can generate revenue for the MMDAs and, more importantly create the much-needed job standing on local asset-based situations.
I am a native of Central Tongu. Anytime I come round the district, I see my youth either sitting helplessly in joblessness or underemployed with low pay. But we can collectively do something about the situation before it gets out of hand. I have been in the development space for about two decades.
I am certain that we can rally our chiefs and the people together to create a better Tongu. We have done it before in Central Tongu. I can vividly remember in 2015/2016, the President initiated intervention for the Job Creation—Youth Enterprise Support (YES) initiative. We owned that initiative. We run with it in Central Tongu.
We mobilised the youth by running Radio Programme on Dela Radio in Adidome; we organised orientation programmes for the youth for mindset change; and we assembled experts to support the youth to prepare modest business plan so they can benefit from the YES initiative.
We did all these without any financial support or express directive from Central or local government. The result was that two people from Central Tongu, out of 107 nationwide applicants, benefited from the YES initiative at the time.
We made arrangements to scale it up for more benefit, but NDC lost the election in 2016, and the initiative was jettisoned. Here we are; John Mahama has redesigned YES. It is now the National Entrepreneurial and Innovation Programme (NEIP). Better positioned with a pool of policy alignment. This is positive, and we must position ourselves by preparing our youth to take advantage of this and other policy-programme.
Today, we have Adwumawura. We have the 24HE Agro-Incentive Policy; we have the National Apprenticeship Programme and STEP-UP; we have FEED Ghana; I know we have the Rapid Industrialisation & mini-processing Plants agenda! Locally, it is time we own these policies and rally our people to take benefit from them.
We can start our own local arrangement for a model pilot on some of the relevant job creation policies handled by the government. We cannot wait all the time for John Mahama to send us a package before we hit the ground! All we need is the ideas first! Then the resource envelop to implement these ideas will be next! First, we must package the ideas.
A couple of weeks ago and this week, I started engaging a section of the youth in my district to offer some perspectives and insights into numerous government policies that are aimed at generating their own jobs as a start-up or scale-up of existing enterprises.
I see very eager and anxious youth. I provided hope and urged them to have confidence in our leaders. I reminded them that the government cannot employ all the youth on its payroll. That’s why job creation policies are made for self-job creation.
Sustaining all these self-made jobs requires holistic training both technical and managerial capabilities. To succeed in sustaining self-employed jobs through SMEs, there is the need for capacity building. That is where they should plan.
You don’t roll out programmes without first having a plan for technical and management capabilities. If we fail to do this, we will fall into the same pitfall that led to the collapse of similar policy-induced job creation interventions.
For me, technical and management skill sets should be the prerequisite! For me, from where I stand, that’s the way to go to de-risk these policy-based enterprises. It is common knowledge and must be well established that managerial and/or technical incapability accounts for enterprise failures in some cases, if not most cases.
For me, it is time some of us had an audience with leadership and authorities for a more aggressive, intentional, and deliberate agenda to make these policies have meaning in the lives of our people. Admittedly, we are not purposefully showing urgency in some of the core job creation matters on the ground after they have been outdoored by the president. I think we can up our game on the ground to give effect to the policies of the government. I can see something is happening. But we can do far more and better.
I have worked out an exclusive, three-volume technical concept note titled “Job Creation through Policy: A Blueprint for Ghana’s Industrial Transformation & Entrepreneurship.” This three-volume written from my perspective as a development practitioner with about two decades of project design and execution experience across World Bank, EU, and MiDA CDFBO funded portfolios, applies project management milestones, local governance law, and social accountability to contemporary policy themes like the 24-Hour Economy, LED, Adwumawura and SME, agribusiness ventures, and others.
The concept note will reach the president and relevant authorities. It is a matter of time. Arrangements will be made for the audience of those who matter!
The concept note introduces highly distinct, debate-driven ideas; possible sources of funding; field-level execution; measurable expected results; and a sustainability mechanism.
Look, you don’t have any idea what we can do in Central Tongu/Tongu, Keta, Ketu North, Afadjato, Adaklu, Anloga jurisdictions as verifiable proof, coupled with my direct work experience, knowledge, and personal studies in these geographic areas, for instance, under the MiDA Commercialization of Farmer-Based Organizations (CDFBO) program.
I have always made myself available to support. Nothing has changed from that!
People express surprise why Confidence Abotsi has not been offered a place in government in spite of his huge expertise, experience, contribution to the party, and track record during his leadership of the NDC Party as Constituency Chairman. It is true we all work to sustain the party during opposition and further worked hard to secure victory in 2024. But it is true also that all will not get it the same day.
Some will get it in the morning, others in the afternoon, and some in the evening. In a football game, sometimes, last-minute introductions onto the pitch win the game. We will support anytime any situation, whether in or not.
For now, we only have to wait for the concept note and how we package our ideas, which are tied to job creation policies of the John Mahama administration.
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DISCLAIMER: The Views, Comments, Opinions, Contributions and Statements made by Readers and Contributors on this platform do not necessarily represent the views or policy of Multimedia Group Limited.
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