The Member of Parliament for Ofoase/Ayirebi and Ranking Member on the Economy and Development Committee, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, has described Ghana’s rising youth unemployment as a structural emergency, proposing five concrete policy shifts to replace what he termed failing programme-based slogans.
Presenting a statement on the floor of Parliament on the state of youth unemployment, Mr Oppong Nkrumah cited official data from the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) showing that by the third quarter of 2025, the unemployment rate among Ghanaians aged 15 to 24 had risen to 32.5 per cent up from 32 per cent in December 2024.
In the Greater Accra Region, he said, youth unemployment reached 49.3 per cent in Q3 2025, meaning nearly one in every two young people in the capital is without work.
“The GSS classifies 1.34 million young people aged 15 to 24 as not in education, employment, or training,” he told the House.
“When Ghana’s National Youth Policy definition extending to age 35 is applied, that figure rises to 1.95 million. Nearly two million young Ghanaians are neither earning nor learning.”
The MP was blunt that no administration, including the previous New Patriotic Party government in which he served, had solved the problem.
“We must all take responsibility,” he said.
Mr Oppong Nkrumah urged the government to adopt the following measures:
First, he called for every job programme to be anchored to a published delivery scorecard with clear metrics on beneficiaries, cost per job created, time-to-placement, and employment retention.
Second, he advocated the separation of skills creation from job creation, with different funding streams for each. “Training people without creating demand for their skills only manufactures disappointment,” he said.
Third, he proposed shifting the funding model from sovereign financing to private mobilisation.
“Government should focus on de-risking, co-investing, and creating regulatory clarity while private capital drives large-scale job creation,” he argued.
Fourth, he recommended making the apprenticeship economy the spine of the national youth employment strategy through national certification, employer co-funding, and clear pathways into employment or self-employment.
Fifth, he called for the building of a credible Labour Market Information System that publishes timely district-level data on vacancies, sectoral demand, skills gaps, and graduate absorption to guide policy and budget decisions.
The Ranking Member also scrutinised several flagship employment initiatives of the current administration, questioning whether they would work or whether an urgent new strategy was needed.
He noted that the 24-Hour Economy was launched in July 2025, but its Authority Bill only came before Parliament in February 2026, with concerns already raised that it did not provide for the promised shift system or employment expansion.
On the One Million Coders Programme, he said it received over 90,000 applications in 48 hours, demonstrating acute hunger among young people.
“Yet by November 2025, the programme’s website was effectively offline before being relaunched with plans to onboard 30,000 people in the first cohort,” he said.
On Adwumawura, he observed that a target of 10,000 businesses a year was announced, but by March 2026, 11 months after launch, grants had been awarded to only 475 entrepreneurs.
He also recalled that on November 12, 2025, 21,000 young people converged at the El-Wak Stadium for a single Ghana Armed Forces recruitment exercise.
Six died in a stampede, and five more went into intensive care, he said, adding that they were competing for only 2,000 slots.
“The question confronting us is whether these programmes will work, or whether we urgently need a new job creation strategy,” Mr Oppong Nkrumah said.
“Ghanaian youth do not want slogans. They want feasible programmes that create dignified, productive, and well-paid jobs.”
